The must-have ingredient of any garden, herbs have long been the stalwarts of the cottage garden, imparting fragrance and health as well as flavor to beds and borders. However, today's garden designers have realized that herbs can also help to shape or be a key visual element in a garden. <i>The Romantic Herb Garden</i> shows how you can design with herbs, using these plants in an innovative and bold way as either a backdrop to or even the star of any garden scheme. In recent years the adaptability of herbs has enabled them to be used in healing gardens, herbaceous borders, paving, grazing gardens, walls and raised-bed planting, containers, and window boxes. This book shows how they can be used to great effect in gardens large and small, either smartly clipped for formal effects or allowed to go wild for a relaxed, been-there-forever look. In larger gardens herbs can give instant effect, providing color and texture while shrubs and herbaceous perennials settle in. In small gardens herbs can transform paving, walls, and flowerbeds, in full sun or shade, within a few months. After looking at the many ways to use herbs, author Caroline Holmes discusses schemes that show herbs to their best advantage while working in harmony with the environment; she then inspires the reader with a number of practical and low-cost garden schemes that include herbs. Finally, a directory of herbs enables you to identify and select the rights ones for your garden, giving you a renewed enthusiasm and zest for planting.