GINA PARKINSON has advice on how to grow your own herbs.

WE have been enjoying the harvest from our herbs over the past few weeks. Most are planted in a new bed created last summer and filled with plants earlier this year. The soil is light and the area is in sun for a good part of the day making it an ideal place for herbs such as thyme and rosemary.

One of the problems with creating a herb garden is choosing what to include. It makes sense to restrict yourself to only those herbs that are useful in the kitchen.

Oregano, thyme, sage and rosemary fall into this category and we grow them all and use them regularly.

However, how can other more obscure plants be resisted when they look so appealing on stands in nurseries? I include hyssop and dill amongst these. Hyssop has small, bitter tasting leaves and long stems of beautiful rich blue flowers. The leaves can be used in soups and stews as well as in salads where if sprinkled sparingly they add an unexpected taste.

Dill grows magnificently, reaching almost two metres in a season. Large umbrella-shaped flower heads are carried on branching stems and attract hoverflies and other insects.

The feathery leaves can be used in fish dishes and sauces - ours don't seem to taste of much, perhaps because the plant has been allowed to flower. Thyme and marjoram have done well, forming bushy plants with plenty of new growth for picking. At this time of year sprigs can be added to green salads or tied together to make bouquet garni to flavour summer soups. Rosemary and sage can be included in the bunch, which needs to be fished out of the dish before serving.

Two vital herbs for our kitchen, parsley and mint, are not in the garden. It is too hot and dry for them so they have been put into terracotta pots and placed on the shady patio at the bottom of the garden. They fill their containers and have been cut back twice over the past four weeks to provide foliage for tabbouleh, a dish that requires vast quantities of both these plants.

The parsley will need to be replaced next year but mint is a tough perennial that is in fact best kept in a pot since it is very invasive. Uncropped stems will flower and attract bees in mid and late summer.

Updated: 16:06 Friday, July 23, 2004