Are you looking for a way to spice up and add a little more flavor to your dishes or cocktails?

Well, I'm going to show you how.

With the addition of a garnish garden right outside your door.

I'm Trace Barnett, and welcome to Garden Party.

Today we are planting a garnish garden.

And not just garnishes in dishes, whatever you're making in the kitchen.

But it can be in cocktails, jams and jellies.

Anything that you're cooking.

Just a little bit of nature's spice to make it really lively.

So this part of my garden has never been utilized.

It's basically up here beside my vegetable garden and I'm like, I have this huge table.

Why not create a garnish garden?

I've kind of went through my already planted garden, and I've kind of pulled some herbs and things that we can plant both by seed and plug plants.

It's really got a ton of flavor.

So the first thing when you're really designing your garnish garden as you want it to be elevated, if you don't have something that's elevated, then maybe use a baker's rack.

That way you don't have to bend over.

It's all about ease of snipping and clipping and just running out and grabbing them on the go.

In keeping with our garden party, old lady basket theme.

Because, you know, just like any other 90 year old woman, I collect them.

I love to take these old just crap pots.

These pots are just faded plastic pots.

Nothing special about them.

And I've already filled them with dirt.

I'm going to go ahead and start planting our herbs in there And then we're just going to enwrap them with hay.

So you won't even tell that those crap pots are in there.

So for great plant options that have a ton of flavor, but also a lot of visual appeal.

Parsley is going to be one of your best friends.

Parsley is one of those great plants that packs a ton of nutrients.

As well as flavor.

And another one of my favorites is marigolds.

Marigolds are a great garnish plant, and they also just smell good too.

Now, one thing I like to do when I'm planting a garden garnish garden, or any kind of container garden or vegetable garden is I'm giving everything room to grow into the pot.

I also like to fill in with seasonal things like lettuces.

And what that allows me to do, as these plants kind of die back as it gets warmer, I'm then able to add more plants or the other parsleys, marigolds.

Whatever's growing in there can fully mature.

This is one of my absolute favorite trailing thymes This is I forget the exact variety, but there are so many.

thyme varieties out there, but I really love this spilling one because it can go in a ton of cocktails I do a blackberry spritzer that I love thyme in, it's just delicious.

I've been telling you, this is the ugliest pot of them all so I spray painted it lime green.

I really like the bright colors, and then I keep it in this basket because then it's also portable if I'm having a party.

Now, this is one of my favorite garnish plants.

And this is basil.

Now there are so many different basils out there.

So I'm planting a variety of sweet basil today.

lemon basil, And I've got some purple basil started in the greenhouse that I will add in later.

Now I'm really spacing my plants in my garnish garden out and leaving tons of room because most herbs, most plants that have great foliage, that's good for flavoring things, they also require a lot of space.

Rojo seconds that.

You know, garnishes are a really great way to finish a dish off.

It really takes it to that next level.

That's how all this beautiful food photography works is.

There's a lot of garnish on there, but it also adds such a good depth of flavor.

My rule of thumb is, is whenever I'm cooking, I usually try to garnish with whatever flavors that I've put in the dish, and luckily, a lot of these herbs and flowers are easy to grow for us here in Alabama, and a lot of them stay green year round.

So it's something that you can plant and just kind of interchange.

And it's just right there for you outside your kitchen.

Then you just take your garnishes, throw them on your dishes and voila, a masterpiece on a plate.

So one of my other favorites is sage.

Sage is one of those great things to grow in a container elevated, because here in the South, it doesn't necessarily love humidity or heat.

So by elevating it and growing it in a container, it just does so much better.

And I mean, sage is one of those things that can go from like gravies and stuffings to also a cocktail as well.

I guess I'm really thirsty today.

So this is another one of my favorite plants.

And this is just a simple viola Pansies and violas are one of, you know, the tried and true great edible flower plants.

And they do fade as the weather warms up here in Alabama.

But if you want to take these off right before they just all die down, they're absolutely beautiful.

When you sugar them.

And then you can put them on desserts like cupcakes, all kinds of cakes, pound cakes, everything.

So in our last pot over here, I'm going to add in just a bit of fennel.

Fennel is one of those great foliage plants because it also serves as a wonderful plant for pollinators and just a little bit of chive.

So I love garlic chive.

And I also love these wonderful purple chive too.

This is one of my favorite blossoms in the garden, and I also love the spicy, spicy, spiky texture of the plant.

So I'm going to add just a little bit of lettuce as filler now.

Lettuces, kales, kohlrabi are all wonderful garnish garden plants.

Now just to finish off our garden here, I'm going to throw in just a few little seeds.

Now I talked to you just briefly about how the lettuces will die back.

And I've left a spot here open here in the corner.

And so this is my absolute favorite foliage, tasty foliage and flower plant.

And this is nasturtium.

You don't need to soak nasturtium even though they have a hard exterior coating.

You just need to take those and plant them into your pots about fourth of an inch depth.

They grow super quick, so they're going to pop up and be smiling at you in a matter of days.

One of my other favorite garnish plants are microgreens.

And so microgreens are one of these things that you want to grow just about a week before you want to utilize them, because you don't want them to get too large.

These are chicken feeders, galvanized chicken feeders.

They have drainage holes at the bottom, and I'm just spreading out a few of these seeds here for our microgreens.

These are a combination of kohlrabi.

There's broccoli all kinds of wonderful flavorful plants here.

You don't want to bury these too deep.

Give them a little tamp just like that.

And these will be up in just a couple days.

So just plan them when you're ready to feast on them.

A couple of other plants that you might want to consider putting on your garnish garden would definitely be Swiss chard.

It's one of my favorites.

I'll just love the colors of the stems.

They come in all the colors of the rainbow and another one is kefir lime.

I love kefir lime, especially if I'm cooking curries, any kind of Asian or Indian dishes.

And plus the trees are just gorgeous themselves.

So now let's put the final touches on our garnish garden.

We're just going to take a little bit of hay or straw and put it all around our plants.

Cover up those ugly pots, hold a little bit of moisture and then we'll label everything.

And there you have it.

Keep your garnish garden watered sufficiently.

Give it a little bit of time.

Release fertilizer every now and then.

And most importantly, be sure, pick it regularly and use it.

Happy flower garnishing.

I'm Trace Barnett and welcome to.

I kind of like them back there though Someone just fell, out of a, off something.

I don't remember any of that, though just do it exactly like that again.

So let's garnish this up.

Huh!

Where did our hay basket go.

Chickens are active today.

How wild does that look?

Pretty wild.

How's those look?

I just raked all that into my boot.

Did y'all see it?

I forgot the question.