5 Edible Greens to Plant in 2025

It’s March, which means our New Year’s resolutions are fading into the forgotten past (who really wanted to budget anyway, right?). However, you can hang onto that spirit of self-love by doing yourself a BIG favor this year by planting these five handy herbs in your garden.

Here is a versatile selection of herbs that is beautiful, fragrant, flavorful and fun to grow.

Chives

If you aren’t already growing chives, you’re missing out on one of the garden’s greatest treasures. Chives start growing before the snow has even melted in the spring and will surprise you with their tenacity. They have beautiful purple flowers that bees adore, and you can harvest chives repeatedly throughout the growing season (they’ll just keep right on growing!). Chives have a mild, onion-like flavor that’s well-suited to a wide range of dishes. Whenever I hear anyone lament about not having a green thumb, I suggest they grow these plants. Chives are the easiest herb to grow (and they’re delicious!).

Dill

No garden is complete without dill and it’s worth growing even if you only grow it for the beautiful seed heads it produces in late summer. The seed heads look like an explosion of fireworks and are exquisite. In addition to beauty, dill is impressive in its size — some varieties can reach upwards of 4 feet tall. The flavor is distinctive and strongly associated with pickles, but dill is useful in other dishes too, such as salads (especially potato salad!) and dressings, and it pairs exceptionally well with lemon. It’s a fun herb that is a true delight from garden to table.

Mint

Other gardeners might warn you about mint — they’ll tell you horror stories about how it took over their garden and grew out of control and to beware of it at all costs. Try not to be too impressed by the anti-mint hyperbole; yes, it can be somewhat invasive, and it spreads quickly in the garden, but it’s also a truly splendid culinary herb. Some benefits are that it produces delicately beautiful flowers, it’s a dream plant for pollinators and it’s hardy and easy to grow. If you’re at all worried about it getting out of control in your garden, you can always plant your mint in a container where it will happily thrive in confinement.

Sage

While mint is busy taking over the garden and dill is busy making super-cool seed heads and chives are busy growing before spring has even arrived, sage is over there being all calm, cool and collected. Sage starts growing when it’s good and ready (hint: not early in the season), it behaves itself and stays where you planted it and occasionally it produces flowers. You won’t even be thinking about any of that, though, because sage has strikingly beautiful textured leaves that are unlike any other herb in the garden. Sage leaves are in a class by themselves, and the plant is well worth adding to your garden if you enjoy herbs with unique characteristics. Plus, sage has tons of uses in the kitchen and adds plenty of flavor to poultry dishes, stuffing and more.

Basil

No overview of handy herbs would be complete without a nod to the brilliant and beautiful basil. It has gorgeous, glossy green (or sometimes purple) leaves and it’s a key element of making pesto, but it also has many other uses in the kitchen. Tomatoes and basil are long-time culinary companions, and their flavors – along with mozzarella cheese – are the basis for Italy’s famed margherita pizzas. Basil, a member of the mint family, is found in many varieties, including Genovese (“Emily” has beautiful leaves and is part of this variety), Italian Large Leaf, Lemon, Lime, Purple Ruffles and more.

Why stop at five handy herbs? Your local garden center or online seed supplier has many other enchanting herbs that will surely make an excellent addition to your garden. You could start with oregano, then branch out to include thyme, parsley, rosemary, bee balm, anise hyssop and many others. You’ll love each and every unique addition to your herb garden and your kitchen will overflow with delightful flavors and fragrances all through the year. Enjoy!