Expecting someone like me, who lived happily on rabbit food and icecream until I was married, to know anything about cooking herbs is as foolish as thinking Julia Child will soon become anorexic. When I met Hank I knew very little about gardening and nothing of herbs, but my mother-in-law introduced me to most of them as a young bride.
Mosie had just turned the raised stone foundation of the old outhouse (long since abandoned, may I add) into a beautiful herb garden, and was in the middle of what we later dubbed her "herb phase." She was so thrilled to have fresh herbs right outside the backdoor that few meats or vegetables could be identified in the herb-laden casseroles she cooked during this period.
As a consequence my enthusiasm for these culinary enhancements only began to grow as Mosie's began to wane. Even today I grow very few herbs for kitchen use, but the thymes in Mosie's herb garden appealed to me as a ground cover from the very beginning. She had four kinds creeping out from the cracks in the foundation; besides the well-known wild thyme, Thymus serpyllum, with its miniature spires of lavender bloom, there was Thymus serpyllum albus, with tiny white flowers, Thymus serphyllum lanuginosus with grayish hairy leaves known as woolly thyme, and Thymus citriodorus, with a lemon scent and pink August blooms.
All the thymes are easy to grow if given plenty of sun and a relatively dry soil. Nothing suits them better than to be put between the flagstones of a terrace or the cracks of a wall so they can creep across the warm rocks. In early spring the wild variety is inclined to look like sprouts of rusted chicken wire, but these old stems are easily trimmed back and will soon produce new growth. Once the tiny, wine-tinged green leaves fill in each clump, I think this thyme is at its most appealing stage, its tiny fingers reaching out over the stones from a puffy pincushion island.
My favorite thyme is the white one. Its lime-green leaves stay low and in June it is covered in tiny white blooms. Ten years ago I planted two or three small patches of it in the cracks of the railroad tie stairs leading up to the garden shed, and as you can see from the picture, it has spread happily in all directions.
Two summers ago when I was out in Oregon, daughter Trum took me to a fabulous nursery that must have had two dozens different thymes. I won't bore you with all their Latin names. In fact all but a few were supplied with labels like Fairy Thyme, Silver thyme, White Moss Thyme. Most of them were incredibly tiny, so closely woven they looked like sheets of fabric instead of plants.
Prices in Oregon are half what they are in New England, a mere $.60 for a pot of thyme instead of $2.00, so I loaded up a cooler with these unusual varieties to bring home. I planted them along the stone path of the Allota garden where they have spread nicely. All are so dense that rarely does a weed manage to sprout among their tiny leaves.
I've never seen any of these thymes in our local nurseries, but having looked on the Internet, I find that there are quite a few sites where you can buy them. One website called The Thyme Garden lists a total of 59 varieties! A pot sells for about $4.00 so the Old Lady of Low Cost Hill quickly asked Trum to bring me some more thyme when she came East last month.
Hank had just finished laying the rough stone steps leading down to the cellar door and the spaces between the stones I'd filled with sand were crying out for thyme. Trum arrived with 3 store-bought pots, but much to my delight, she'd also rolled up a mat of thyme she'd taken from an area of her garden she was re-doing. It was as large as a bath towel. We gently tore it into small pieces and filled all the cracks between the stones. They appear to be doing well.
I use the white thyme as a filler whenever I force a few paper whites in the winter. I plant the bulbs in two window boxes I built that fit perfectly on the living room window, 3 to a box, storing them in the cold cellar until January. At the same time I plant a small clump of thyme between each bulb. When I bring them up and put them in the window, the thyme wakes up along with the bulbs and spreads its pretty green tendrils over the soil. It's a great combination.
If your property has a flagstone path or patio, try planting some thyme between the flags. You may have to weed a bit in the beginning, but once they're established these handsome mats of greenery will take care of themselves. As a matter of fact, if you don't have a nice stone path or patio, you can grow the wild thyme as a lawn. I'm always seeing whole stretches of blooming thyme each June when this herbal ground cover turns lawns from green into a sea of lavender. This thyme spreads quickly and even tolerates a weekly sheering with the lawn mower. Just don't walk on it in bare feet when it's in bloom as it attracts hundreds of bees.
