Fresh herbs jazz up any dish and a herb spiral is a great way to have lots of herbs in a small space. Plus, herb spirals are PRETTY! Herb spirals are a permaculture idea that allow you to keep plants with varying watering needs together in a tiny area. We’ve built our herb spiral out of bricks we removed from our old chimney/fireplace.

You’ll need to layout your spiral shape with a small bucket (ours was maybe 8litres/2 gallons) and a bit of rope. Frugal Man measured ours out at a 1.2 metres radius. We marked the spiral with bricks from our pile as we spiraled in with the rope. Then I dug out the area and removed all the grass.

Once the grass was removed and the spiral marked, we started building the brick structure. Herb spirals are usually built with bricks or rocks, without mortar so you can remove them and take out plants that have grown too big, then rebuild as needed down the track.

When the structure is as high as you like, generally close to 1 metre tall (ours is 80 cm), fill the centre of the spiral halfway full of gravel, concrete rubble, well packed broken bricks, tree branches or other fill material. The top of the spiral is where your Mediterranean herbs like rosemary will go and they like well drained soil, but they still will want SOME moisture, so fill well. We had lots of broken concrete from our renovation last year, so that is what we used. Continue the fill around the spiral, but not so high. Remember you’ll have a lot of dirt to fill!

When you’ve finished filling your rubble/gravel, source your dirt. If you build a spiral about the same size as ours, you’ll need about 3/4 of a cubic metre of dirt to fill it. Then comes the fun part…PLANTING!

Think of your spiral as having three zones, Dry (Top), Medium (Middle) and Moist (Bottom). Plant your Mediterranean herbs like rosemary, oregano, sage, curry plant, thyme and lavender at the top. Moderate moisture herbs like fennel, lemon balm, mint, parsley and nasturiums go the middle. Down at the bottom put your moisture loving herbs like bee balm, dill and watercress. Of course, there is only so much of each zone to be had, so you’ll have to manage as best you can. You can see what I’ve done in the photo below.

Note that most herb spirals don’t have soft bodied annuals like basil and dill, but I’ve tossed a couple in mine from the garden for convenience sake. Most have stayed in the main garden.

Do you have a herb spiral? What herbs do YOU have?