Kitchen herb garden (square foot)
Basil, cilantro, parsley, chives, thyme, oregano and dill in a 4 × 4 bed small enough to sit by the kitchen door.
- Bed size
- 4′ × 4′
- Soil depth
- 8″
- Layout
- Square Foot Gardening
- Plants
- 40
- Sun
- Full sun; thyme and oregano tolerate the hottest, driest corner.
Transplant basil after all frost danger; everything else can be sown or transplanted 2 weeks before last frost. Cilantro and dill re-sow every 3–4 weeks.
What’s planted
- Sweet basil‘Genovese’3 plants · 12″ spacing
- Italian parsley‘Dark Green Italian Flat-leaf’8 plants · 6″ spacing
- Cilantro‘Santo’16 plants · 6″ spacing
- Chives‘Chives’1 plant · 12″ spacing
- Dill‘Bouquet’2 plants · 12″ spacing
- Greek oregano‘Greek’2 plants · 12″ spacing
- Thyme‘French’8 plants · 6″ spacing
Why these neighbors
Care notes
- Dill and cilantro are both umbel-flowering insectary plants; staggered bolting keeps hoverflies and parasitoid wasps fed across the whole season — pest control for every bed within thirty feet, even if this bed itself has no in-bed pair to point at.
- Basil and parsley share water and feed — both want steady moisture and rich soil, so the north rows run on one drip schedule. Thyme and oregano share the opposite: lean, fast-draining, resent the water the leafy herbs need. Grouping them this way lets you water the bed in two zones with one setup.
- No rosemary or sage in this bed on purpose — they're poor neighbors for basil and parsley, which want richer, moister soil than woody Mediterranean herbs. Pot them separately; they prefer the neglect anyway.
- Likewise no carrots here, and no cilantro/dill/parsley in the salad bed — all three share pests and diseases with carrots, so they're kept apart.
- Row 2 is the dry row: thyme and oregano are zone 5+ perennials that want half the water of everything north of them. Both overwinter; the bed restarts itself.
- Cilantro's four cells are a succession engine — re-sow one cell every week and you'll never be without leaf. Let the bolters flower: the seed is coriander.
- Pinch basil's flower buds weekly; harvest from the top, never strip the bottom leaves. Three plants under this regime out-produce a supermarket habit.
- Dill left to flower hosts swallowtail caterpillars and lacewings. Bouquet is compact enough to stay inside its cell if you harvest the fronds young.
- An 8-inch soil depth is plenty for every herb here; this layout also works in a deep balcony planter with the same 16-cell grid.
Add it to your garden
Creates a new 4′ × 4′ raised bed with every plant pre-placed at the positions above. You can move things around in the planner afterwards.