Herbs can be described as useful plants. 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, rosemary, chives, and many more as you walk the brick pathway. Some less common herbs to look for here include: Lovage- its leaves have a strong celery scent and are used to flavor herbs and stews, and Salad Burnet – the dried powdered leaf was used to stops wounds from bleeding. Fresh leaves were added to salads. They taste like cucumber.
This garden also contains more common herbs such as lavender, whose oils are used to make soaps and lotions, and repel mosquitos. The leaves and flowers may be used in cooking. The herb mix “Herbs de Provence” contains savory, marjoram, rosemary, thyme, oregano, and lavender.