Herbs spirals and appropriate design

[Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>]

The keyhole/herb spiral discussion brings up some larger points about
design. I tore my herb spiral out for several reasons. One was that it was
too far from the house; our old garden is inside a deer fence (essential
here) but the previous owners had placed it 100 feet away. Duh. So going to
it to clip herbs 3 times a day was too much trouble. Also, it seemed to be a
weed trap. Grasses really loved to get under the rocks, so I had to
disassemble the rocks to pull the grass roots. Kind of tedious. But biggest
reason of all was that we just don't cook that much with herbs. Having 30
linear feet of herbs nicely coiled into a spiral just was too much abundance
for my meager herb use. So it got overgrown and ragged looking.

I can't blame the design for that. It's a good illustration of why every
design must suit the residents as well as the landscape. I got so impressed
with all the cool features of an herb spiral that I forgot to interview the
client--myself--about its usefulness to me. I think I imagined that having
all those great herbs would change my culinary habits. Doesn't work that
way. About 5 herb plants is enough for me, not 30.

This also shows why Pc designers are so loath to give advice before they see
a site. It's not that they want to rack up billable hours, it's that a
design is almost destined to fail unless you understand both the landscape
and the needs of the client, things that take time. Plugging in a design
element cookie-cutter fashion, the way keyhole beds and herb spirals often
are, is too tempting.

The site- and client-specific nature of Pc is something that is very
difficult to get across. We build McDonalds to be the same whether in LA or
Moscow, and that's a very successful strategy, since a no-brainer "I'll have
what I had yesterday," approach is what many people seem to prefer. So it's
frustrating to get questions like "what's the best method of building soil?"
And people get annoyed when I answer, "Where? For what purpose? On what
substratum? What's the rainfall?" and 10 other questions. People think I'm
being a smart-ass, but we need to know those things to design appropriately.

I liked Ava's approach of planting a mound with many different species.
There's no reason an herb spiral has to be just herbs. If I build another
one, I'd make sure it was full of plants I actually use, herb or not.

(BTW, Ava had asked what an herb spiral is; its a mound of earth about 3
feet high and 5 across that has herbs winding up it in a spiral. The spiral
is usually outlined with rocks. Ideally the design creates microclimates: a
hot, dry, upper sunward slope, a cool shady side, an east side protected
from burning PM rays, etc. So it can be planted with species that have
diverse requirements.)

Ava wrote

> I cultivate my herbs in what I call a back-door garden which consists of a
> mound.  The tallest plants on top (fennel) and then I progress downward and
> around dependant upon the height and the sun/shade requirements of each
> plant.  I also disperse some breakfast radish, heirloom butter lettuce,
> mesclun, swedish kale and corn salad within my bed.  The radish is ready in
> 25 days and I replant those beds (2) with another crop of kale and lettuce,
> which are harvestable in 65 days.  I love working in the mound, everything
> is easily accessible and I never have to bend over, except to plant.  All
> the soil from my sunken beds make up the mound.  I use sunken beds for a
> variety of reasons, the 2 main ones being wind and water.  Some of the soil
> I dig out goes around the exterior to protect the plants, whatever is
> leftover goes to the mound.  It all works very well for me.