Herb Spirals and Spiral Gardens

About a week ago, someone asked about our spiral garden.  Ours happens to be a huge variation on the Herb Spiral.  Herb Spirals are a cool way of taking a traditional row of herbs and twisting it up into a space saving, multi-micro-climate little herb garden.

Here is a design by Bill Mollison:

Not only are herb spirals pretty to look at if done well, but more importantly they create several different micro-climates for your herbs.  The top of the spiral will have drier soil than the lower part as it drains through the day.  The side facing the sun will be considerably warmer than the one facing away from the sun.  The side facing the sunrise will warm earlier in the day and maintain a more even and gentle heat than the side facing the hot afternoon sun.  Therefore, you can plant a great diversity of herbs in your spiral meeting their many varied needs.  Herbs that like heat and well drained soil, such as rosemary, can be planted towards the top of the spiral facing the afternoon sun.  Those that like things cooler and wetter and would bolt if exposed to too much heat can be placed accordingly.  Bill's above example also includes a small pond at the bottom to grow water plants such as watercress and water chestnut.  This also gives the added benefits of ecological diversity, reflected sunlight from the pond surface, more edge, providing a habitat for frogs which love to hunt pests, and a water source for many beneficial pollinators like bees and hummingbirds. 

Herb Spirals are generally quite small (about 1-2 meters wide and tall), as they are designed to be space saving, user friendly and easily watered with just one sprinkler.  Our spiral garden that I mentioned in Going Rogue is huge by comparison.  But it is basically the same concept.  It is about 10 meters wide and 2 meters high and has a gigantic Big Leaf Maple growing at the center.  There are very large boulders along the tier edges as opposed the football-sized rocks generally used in herb spirals.  We have yet to put in a pond, but it is in the plans.  The design of our garden allows for cool loving crops to be grown on the shaded side all summer long.  Not only is it facing away from the sun, but it is also shaded by the maple.  And heat-loving plants do quite well on the sunny side because they get both the heat from the sun and the reflected heat from the large boulders.

the sun-facing side of our spiral garden

Our spiral garden is home to many different perennial fruits such as raspberry, gooseberry, jostaberry, strawberry and fig.  It also houses many annuals in the summer - lettuce, kale, spinach, broccoli, brussel sprouts, summer and winter squash, etc.  We are also sure to plant lots of annual flowers each year to attract beneficial insects and birds and provide pollen and nectar for the honey bees.

not much going on yet since it is still so early in the season

The spiral garden belongs to the kids.  It is their experimental zone and they get to choose what goes in each year.  We, of course, help direct them as to ideal placement, but for the most part, it's their thing.  They get to design and learn all about different plants and micro-climates and, most importantly I think, learn from experience what works and what doesn't.  They get to make their own choices, see what happens through the season, and learn from it so that they can improve upon it the next year.  I don't want my kids to take for granted whatever some "expert" tells them they should do.  I want them to experiment and think for themselves.  Who knows what cool thing they'll figure out that you or I never thought of?