Flavorful and fragrant, the Herb Garden contains plants rich in legend and lore as well as aroma. Featuring plants used for centuries in medicines, cosmetics, decoration, and cooking, this garden shows best from June through the first frost. It is one of the older gardens at IBG, established in the early 1990s. The stonework came from the Eastman Building which burned down in the 1986 Boise downtown fire.

You can see various species of thyme, oregano, comfrey, marjoram, rosemary, chives, and many more as you walk the brick pathway that winds through the Herb Garden. It is located on the east side of the Garden Cottage.

Interesting Herb Facts

~ the first recorded use of herbs is on ancient Sumerian clay tablets nearly 4,500   years old 

~ in botanical usage, a herb or herbaceous plant is any non-woody plant, regardless of its flavor, scent or other properties 

~ culinary herbs are distinguished from vegetables in that, like spices, they are used in small amounts and provide flavor rather than substance to food 

~ herbs may also be those plants with healing or medicinal characteristics
 
~ they have been used for everything from making paper to preventing premature baldness