Here's another great gardening herbal

The Northwest Herb Lover's Handbook.

I have my own little plot in our backyard for my first medicinal herb garden. It's 12 by 8 feet in size and is a kinda shady spot. Most herbs love sun. But then again, most herbs that grow well in the Pacific Northwest do well in shade to part sun. Peppermint is a good example of that, although mints grow like crazy and tend to take over - so I've made myself a mint bucket filled with apple mint, chocolate mint, spearmint, peppermint and pineapple mint. I'm going to put my mint bucket smack dab in the middle of my herb garden as a centerpiece and lay a stone path up to it with all my other herbs surrounding it. CAN. NOT. WAIT. This may be your first inkling of how much of a herbal nerd I really am.

Anyhoo, The Northwest Herb Lover's Handbook is a great resource for us PNW herbs gardeners. The author (Mary Preus) suggests the following herbs (among others) for full shade: chervil and sweet woodruff. For partial shade, she suggests borage, catnip, comfrey, feverfew, horseradish, nasturtium, sorrel, valerian, and viola. I plan to include almost all of those herbs in my garden in addition to parley, lemon balm, chamomile, yarrow, evening primrose, monarda (or lavender bergamot), sweet annie, hyssop, anise hyssop, echinacea, garden chives and savory and angelica. You can count on regular photo updates. And for those of you family and friends who live nearby - you can count on fresh cut culinary and medicinal herbs this summer.