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About this tool
Plan a kitchen herb bed: spacing between plants, how many fit, pot depth, sun hours and which herbs to keep apart.
A herb garden spacing planner works out whether the herbs you want will actually fit the bed you have. It gives each plant a square of side equal to its recommended plant-to-plant spacing — the way horticulture extension guides state herb spacing — so one basil needs 30 × 30 cm and one rosemary needs 60 × 60 cm, then totals the footprint against your bed area and reports how many of each herb the bed could hold on its own. It also carries the minimum soil depth and daily sun hours for fifteen kitchen herbs, and flags the runners that will take over a shared bed.
Open Herb Garden Spacing Planner on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Enter Bed length and Bed width, and set Measured in to cm, inches or feet.
Under "How many of each herb?" set a count against any of the 15 herbs — each row shows that herb's spacing in cm, soil depth in cm and daily sun hours.
Read "Bed space used" as a percentage with Deepest soil required and Sun the sunniest herb wants, then the Plant by plant table of spacing, depth, sun and Fits alone; Copy plan puts the summary on your clipboard.
Compares the total footprint against your bed instead of guessing.
Shows the deepest and sunniest requirement in the plan, which sets the planter.
Flags mint and lemongrass, which swallow a shared bed within a season.
Spacing follows the mature size of the plant: about 10-15 cm for fenugreek, coriander and chives, 20-30 cm for parsley, basil, thyme and oregano, 45 cm for mint, sage and fennel, 60 cm for rosemary and lemongrass, and 90 cm for curry leaf. Crowding below these distances cuts airflow and is the usual cause of fungal leaf spot in a damp season.
Shallow-rooted herbs such as thyme, chives and fenugreek manage in 15 cm of soil, most kitchen herbs want 20-25 cm, dill and fennel need 30-40 cm for their taproot, and curry leaf needs at least 45 cm. Size the planter to the deepest herb you plan to put in it, not the average.
Keep mint and lemongrass in their own sunken pots, because both spread by runners or a widening clump and will crowd out neighbours in one season. Fennel is the other one to separate: it is widely reported to suppress nearby herbs and it cross-pollinates with dill, spoiling the seed of both.
Mediterranean herbs — rosemary, thyme, oregano, sage, dill — want 6 to 8 hours of direct sun and lose flavour without it, while coriander, parsley, chives, mint and ajwain leaf do well on 4 to 6 hours and appreciate shade in the afternoon. In an Indian summer, morning sun with afternoon shade suits almost all of them better than an unbroken full day.