The Rosemary plant originated in the Mediterranean and strangely it is one of the plants which seems to very much like growing in our rocky garden here in Galway.
It is also called Polar Plant, Compass-weed, Romero and Rosmarinus coronarium
Growing rosemary in my garden is easy. I started off with a couple of plants from my local garden centre, planted it in my herb path – see photograph below for how this started
I’m also growing rosemary along the border of my soft fruit garden and it’s surviving very well here.
In my garden, it seems to thrive on neglect – although not too much neglect.
SOIL, ROCKS AND STONE
It does need well-drained soil and I have plenty of that – in amongst the rocks and stones.
It’s lovely in a rockery or border and can grow as high as four feet tall – not mine though – that could be the aforementioned neglect.
Rosemary plants do like a limey soil – again because we are close to the Burren, and our garden is full of limestone rocks there is no shortage of lime here.
I have several Rosemary plants around the house – one is on the herb path and this one here is in a pot just outside the front door.
If you are growing it in a pot you need to mix some sand and lime with your compost and make sure the pot has good drainage. It grows best south facing if you can – it likes plenty of sunshine.
You can see in the above photograph that I have lined the pot with newspaper – I find it helps with potting – stops the contents falling through the soil.
A LITTLE ROSEMARY RITUAL
It is said that if you run your hands along a Rosemary plant and inhale the scent you will have a happy home.
Well, I don’t know about that – could that be why I have a happy home?
Actually, runni
ng your hands along a beautiful rosemary plant is a lovely little ritual to perform when you are returning home after a difficult day – the scent is calming so maybe that’s it.
Rosemary can get very straggly and unkempt so I trim mine occasionally – very occasionally to be honest.
One of the problems we get here is couch grass growing in wild abundance.
It is a terrible pest and grows both underneath and through a lot of our plants including the rosemary. I pull it when I see it but since we are invaded by couch grass coming in from surrounding fields it is difficult to prevent.
PROTECTING ROSEMARY IN WINTER
To protect your Rosemary in winter a good idea is to cut them back to half-length in late summer. This allows new shoots to strengthen before the cold weather hits.
You can mulch them and cover them with sacking for further protection but I have to admit I didn’t do this last year and yet my plants survived – despite the snow.
There are lots of ways you can use this plant – besides sticking a few sprigs in with your roast lamb and you can read about some of the benefits here.
Bye for now and enjoy your garden.
Grace
ENCOURAGE YOUR CHILDREN TO LOVE NATURE
MAGGIE MANY CATS
As well as gardening I love to write – I used to write for Ireland’s RTE 1 children’s radio stories and still love writing for children.
My Ballyyahoo children’s books are my favourite personal project.
My aim is to share my love of nature with children.
Each book in the series is linked to the Ballyyahoo website with additional information and nature photographs.
There’s so much to love about nature – best of all it’s free!
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