Superb herbs to supercharge your meals

1. Because if you are an enthusiastic gardener, creating a herb garden today will help satisfy your planting urges till the soil warms up enough to bung in the summer veg.

2. Because if you are not a gardener, you will find you have an almost instant plot that is unlikely to die on you no matter how much you neglect it.

3. Because if you don't happen to have a backyard, a smallish herb garden can be grown on a sunny window ledge, on a table by a sunny window, or planted in hanging baskets on either side of a sunny front door or window - anywhere you can reach out to water, feed or pick the herbs.

4. Because with rising food prices you may want to ditch the more expensive veg, like asparagus flown from Brazil, and stick to the cheaper fruit and veg like pumpkin, apples or whatever happens to be on special ... and adding herbs is the classic way to turn everyday veg into five-star eating.

There are two ways to get an almost-instant herb garden. The first is to head to the garden centre, or even in some cases the supermarket or farmers market, and buy half a dozen pots of your favourite. You can line them up on the windowsill or patio as they are, or repot into something more glamorous, or slip them into the garden just outside the kitchen door. The latter is important - you need those herbs where you can pick them easily and often. All herbs do best picked often - they have thrived as garden plants exactly because they need that kind of constant small pruning.

Do not, however, buy parsley or coriander yet - they will go to seed as soon as the weather warms up. Wait till mid-September. Don't hunt out basil either, as the cold will kill it. Again, wait.

The second method is to make/buy a batch of muffins, or an orange almond cake, or a tempting-looking quiche, and turn up on the doorstep of a friend who just happens to be growing the herbs you envy. Suggest a wander around the garden while eating the muffins, orange cake et al and find a way to tactfully hint you'd like them to dig up some roots of mint, marjoram, oregano, or take cuttings of their thyme, lavender, or rosemary, all of which can be planted now with or without the aid of "rooting powder" and which will probably grow once the magic of spring is in the air.

Useful conversation starters might go along the lines of, "Oh, what a magnificent thyme bush! I really should put some in. I read somewhere that thyme grows really quickly from cuttings". Make sure you just happen to have a small trowel and a plastic bag in your pocket.

Which herbs? These are the essentials, the ones that will truly transform your meals.

A lush bushy thyme with soft stems and even softer leaves for chopping over pizza or into salads or up the rear end of a chook about to be roasted, plus another variety with wiry stems and small, tough, intensely fragrant leaves. Pick the stems, tie them in a bunch, and leave them in your soup/casserole/stew then haul them out before serving. Thyme needs full sun; cover the base of the bush with about 10cm of fresh soil every year to rejuvenate it so new roots grow from the stems.

Add to anything from apple cake to roast chook, but unless it's a leg of lamb, a branch in the oven, not in the dish, will add that hint of fragrance rather than overwhelm. Needs full sun. A prostrate bush grows magnificently in a hanging basket.

This is not culinary mint, but with soft green leaves, for making mint tea, adding to fruit salad, or lining the baking dish when making chocolate cake, choc muffins, choc biscuits et al to give an elusive choc mint flavour. Needs full sun to dappled shade and LOTS of water.

This is like a wiry thyme, but better. I usually add both thyme and winter savoury leaves to any stuffing or when roasting chips in the oven, plus the usual pizza/pasta/casserole range. A potato or sweet potato soup with a hint of winter savoury turns "plebeian" into "emperor's delight". (Assuming the emperor is of the gourmet variety.) Needs full sun, and water when you remember

Like thyme and savoury, these improve almost any main course or entrée. The flavour will change depending on which herb you use, and how much, but that, of course, is the whole point of adding them. Needs full sun and room to spread.

Not quite as essential, but used with enormous discretion adds depth and deliciousness to anything savoury, including cheese scones. Needs full sun.

So you can squeeze some gel from one of the leaves when you burn yourself taking any of the above dishes out of the oven. Aloe vera puts out tiny baby aloe vera that can be transplanted. Needs LOTS of sun, and water now and then.

Later in spring, when the soil is warm enough to sit on, plant parsley, which as an annual must be planted every spring, but is worth every second and cent you spend on it. You will also need basil, for a summer of sensual Mediterranean delights, and coriander for dishes too numerous to summarise here. They too are annuals. But by the time you put them in you will be filled with confidence from the success and deliciousness of the herb garden you put into today, or just possibly plant tomorrow. But if you do get hold of those herbs today, then dinner may be wonderful...