Building a Backyard Herb Garden
When pots of herb started taking over my deck and porch, they needed somewhere to go. But my new yard didn’t have any good place to plant them. So I got some (pin)spiration and decided to create my own backyard herb garden by burying pots into the ground.
Update (3.27.26)
I originally published this post in July of 2014. We’re now into 2026 and the garden space is still going strong. About half of my herbs return each year, depending on how cold of a winter we’ve had. I’ve had to replace the pots here and there over time. Our Michigan winters have made them brittle and I’ve accidentally stepped on them, but that’s the only significant upkeep so far.
How I Built my Backyard Herb Garden
When we bought our house, the outside was listed as “professionally landscaped.” And I’m pretty sure in our case “professionally landscaped” was code for “potential gardens filled with river rocks.”
There were a few plants and bushes, but almost everything resembling a garden was full of rocks. Turns out piles of rocks are where spiders like to live. Lots of spiders. I hate spiders. The rocks had to go.
During previous summers, I’ve put in a raised perennial bed, added brick edging around three wildflower gardens, installed a retaining wall, and replaced countless rocks with day lilies and irises. As of this summer, it’s official – the gardens are done. And my favorite part of the finished yard is the new backyard herb garden I installed this spring.
I’d always kept my herbs in pots during the summer, assuming they wouldn’t survive a West Michigan winter (we’re zone 5). But my gardening friends assured me that assumption was wrong.
So when the clay pot around a chive plant started crumbling, rather than get a new pot, I planted chive in one of my gardens. When chive came back to life the following summer, I was emboldened and started adding other herbs. Pretty soon I had a section of random herbs that looked out of place and no idea how to fix it.
Inspiration struck in the form of an herb garden photo I found on Pinterest, so I set out this spring to translate that idea to my backyard.
I started by digging up my existing herbs, putting them in matching plastic pots, and burying those pots in the ground. Done! … Nope. It looked dumb.
Besides all of the pots looking really random just stuck in the ground, I wanted to spread mulch in between the herbs to deter weeds and give me an easy way to walk between the pots. But just putting mulch between everything would look even more random. Plus the mulch would wash away during the first good rain.
To give the space more definition, I added a border around the pots with some of the extra bricks we had laying around, burying the bricks vertically into the ground:
I also added a few additional pots to fill in the space I’d created:
Supplies I Used
Buy Now → 
Stainless Steel Re-Usable Plant Labels, 12-Pack
Buy Now →In total, I sunk 14, 10 inch plastic pots into the ground this spring.
They are filled with: chive, sage, thyme, rosemary, oregano, cilantro, parsley, tarragon, mint, chocolate mint, spearmint, lemon balm, lavender and a bonus – a tomato plant.
Eight of the herbs are returning plants from last year. The others are new to my garden and/or replacement plants for ones that didn’t survive the winter.
I’m super happy with how my little backyard herb garden turned out. What do you think?
Frequently Asked Questions
You can use whatever kind of pot you like. I chose plastic ones because they’re lightweight, affordable, easy to find in bulk (I needed 14), and can stand up to our West Michigan temperture swings while living in the ground year round. Tera cotta pots and ceramic pots cracked and broke in the ground quickly, leaving behind a mess and shards of pottery in the garden. Plus both can be pricey (especially ceramic) and heavy.
The pots prevent herbs like lemon balm, mint (all varieties), and oregano from taking over my herb gardens and choking out the herbs that don’t spread, sprawl and vine. If you are a more diligent gardener than I am, you may find that you can simply clip back the spread regularly and be just fine, but I am not that attentive to my plants.
Any decorative garden edger that you like! I used traditional sized bricks, stood on their ends and buried halfway into the soil, for my herb garden simply because we had them laying around from another project and I wanted to put them to use. You could you small fencing, retaining wall bricks, weather treated wood – whatever you want or have available!
Every spring 9 herbs – chive, lemon balm, mint, spearmint, thyme, sage, curly parsley, lavender, and oregano – come back from the previous year. That leaves me 5 spots for new herbs. Rosemary always gets 1 of them. Which leaves 4 spots for whatever catches my eye in the nursery that spring. If I really can’t find anything new I like, I plant a nasturtium or two in the back corners of the herb garden to distract the bugs. Basil always goes on my raised deck with the lettuce where the Japanese beetles are less likely to find it.
How I Use The Herbs I Grow
To be honest, my herb garden is largely planted for drinking! And not just cocktails and mocktails, but tons of simple syrups. The minute I find a new herb in the garden center I wonder if it’s something I can turn into a delicious syrup and how best to use it.
>Learn more about planting herbs for cocktails and cooking
Fantastic idea! And super smart about keeping herbs in pots. I find that mint in particular loves to spread like a carpet and take everything over if not contained. Keeping them in pots lets everything stay nice and tidy. What a lovely garden!
Thank you!! The mints, oregano, and lemon balm all like to roam, so the pots are great for containing all of those. I’m curious to see if the pineapple sage comes back next year. Regular sage does, so there’s a chance… (fingers crossed!)
Did you put drainage holes in the pots? Does putting them in pots discourage weeds?
Yes and yes. I use the drainage holes that are built into the plastic pots and make sure they’re punched out of the plastic before I sink the pots into the ground. Putting the herbs in pots lets me put a thick layer of mulch around the pots with greatly discourages weeds. Almost nothing grows through the mulch and only a very few small weeds show up in a pot or two.