I use herbs throughout the flower gardens, but I'd love to have a defined herb garden like Natal's -- which is so gorgeous! My husband and I really believe that nepeta, lavender, rosemary and basil keep our place relatively bug-free (mosquitoes, houseflies and gnats). So, we use those plants all around the gardens. I have a container of spearmint and chocolate mint, oregano and parsley in the cottage garden. There are also lavenders (Munstead and Spanish) planted in the cottage garden. There are two nepetas and two rosemary plants (one cascading). In the fragrance garden where we have an evening dining patio, we just removed privet and planted agastache, basil, lavender, salvia. In the pot on the dining table, I have Thai basil and petunias. On the back of the waterfall hill, we also removed privet and replaced it with lavender, oregano, culinary sage and thyme. I grow bronze fennel in the butterfly garden as a host for BST caterpillars. Friends were recently here for dinner and during the garden tour, they kept pinching off pieces of fennel to eat! My husband told them if they hit something crunchy.... LOL I have chives growing in the rain garden along the path and lavender at the top of the deer resistant garden, in the sundial bed and beside the garage door. This year, I am growing basil on both sides of the front path, mixed with agastache, angelonia, purple sage, nepeta, stachys and salvia greggii and guarantica. I use a lot of thyme as ground cover as it suppresses weeds so well, but allows bulbs and perennials to grow through. It's growing along the walkways and paths everywhere in the garden and I keep digging out a trowel now-and-then to keep spreading it around. I do find that thyme does great with afternoon shade and under plants and shrubs. We can sit outside on our porch, patios or deck and not be bothered by bugs. But, if we walk out into the meadow or neighborhood, flies, gnats and mosquitoes are a problem. We have no explanation other than the use of herbs. Cameron

I see you are in zone 5. Check hardiness of some items like rosemary. I would suggest looking at the needs of the plants - sun, moisture, drainage, etc. Plants that have very different needs shouldn't be intermixed. For example, cilantro, mint, parsley, and dill all like at least an average moisture level and would prefer at least average soil richness. While sage, thyme, and lavender prefer lean (ie not rich) soils with excellent drainage. These two groups wouldn't fare well if interplanted. Something would suffer from too much water, not enough, etc. I also would suggest planting annuals and biennials where they are easy to replant. Intermixed in and around perennials makes it harder to replant each year. An edge, an end, or whatever provides for easier replanting. FataMorgana

Really nice! Makes mine look sort of punk now. My husband and I always say "All it takes is money" to make ourselves feel better about our humble abode when we see something like that. Just kidding, really nice photos and a body could seriously steal some ideas from a place like that. Congrats on the new Blog Site, very interesting and inspiring.

@strawchicago z5 Straw, I will get some pictures later today of my Jubilee's. We had torrential rains all yesterday and last night, so all of my plants are a little heavy right now including all the rose flowers that are blooming ;( Once they dry off and perk up from being so close to the ground I'll try to get some pictures, The 2 I have are looking really beautiful though with big fluffy magenta flowers. I took time to smell them all this morning for you. I'm not the best with scent descriptions, but I wanted to try for you- Olivia Austin rose- not very strong scent....can't comment Imogen - typical rose scent (to me) Carding Mill - Beautiful scent, fruity, almost tropical but not too fruity like my Westerlands. Jubilee Celebration - I really like this smell now that I got up close to them to sniff the flowers. It is fruity like Carding Mill, but with a strong kind of lemon zest scent to it. Lemon zest might not sound good, but this is my favorite smell of all the Austin's so far I think. If someone told me a flower smelled strongly like lemon zest, I probably wouldn't love the idea. So maybe that's not the best description of it but I'll try it again later and see if I can come up with a better description. I'm going to order some more of the rose though, I really like it :)