
We expanded the herb patch last year following a fragrant, fascinating, and rainy excursion to one of the Jekka’s Herb Farm open days. We returned from our trip, smelling strongly of every herb imaginable, with two huge, damp, paper bags full of baby plants. Salad burnet, caraway, chervil, lemon verbena, orange and lemon thymes, winter savoury, hyssop, wild celery, Moroccan mint, and sorrel. Space for the aromatic collection was made by removing a sprawling conifer shrub that had taken over most of a flowerbed, and emptying a couple of patio pots. While the herbs willingly fill out their allocated spots in the soil, we have been harvesting by the handful and experimenting in the kitchen. We have found ourselves regularly going back to the sorrel, a broad-leaved variety (rumex acetosa), which has proved extremely useful and delicious in cooking.
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