Here are some general tips that I offer based on my own experience.
Start out small and don’t get discouraged. Take time to adequately plan your garden design site and layout before you actually start tilling or planting. Start with some basic herbs and then add some fun and/or unusual ones. Don’t hesitate to grow an herb with no other motive than you like it or you find it appealing or attractive.
Keep a garden journal and take photos. Your journal can be a simple handwritten notebook or it can be computerized. Record such things as planting dates, harvest dates, dates of significant occurances such as frosts and snows, other occurances such as bird or butterfly visitors to your garden or just about anything that you want to keep track of. This journal is also a handy place to keep list of to-do items such as winter projects or things to plant next season. Take photos of your garden and specific plants throughout the growing season as well as your garden in winter. Digital imaging makes this activity easy and inexpensive.
Start a garden reference library of some good books or magazines. There is much informational material online but there is nothing like popping open a book or magazine to find something in a hurry or to brows through leisurly for new thoughts or ideas.
Make herbs a year-round activity; cook with them, drink herbal teas, take herbal baths and use them to provide tantalizing scents in your home. Enjoy your herb garden, relax and contemplate your herbs- amongst your herbs.

Here are some basic criterion for selecting the site for your garden:
Most common herbs require partial to full sun, so choose your garden site accordingly. Full to partial sun means a minimum of 6 hours of sun each day during the growing season. This exposure to sun should be when the sun is most strong; from mid-day through early afternoon. Always know the shade tolerance of the herb you select as indicated on the seed packet or from a reference source.

The site for your garden should have a slope of less than 30 degrees. If planting on a slope, locate the more drought-tolerant herbs such as marjoram, savory or thyme towards the top and place the ones that need more moisture, such as basil or chives at the base. The natural drainage of the site will make it easier for you to provide your plants with the optimum amount of soil moisture. If possible, create a series of terraces on the slope to make the planting areas more level and easier to work on.

Wind can put a lot of stress on plants. It can damage plants by breaking stems and it can cause excessive water loss. If possible locate more delicate plants such that they get protection from the wind from taller or more robust plant species. During the growing season, plants in windy locations will need to be watered up to twice the amount as plants in sheltered areas.

Almost all plants like soil that is well drained. Herbs in particular tend to like or tolerate drier soil conditions. If the only choice for your garden site is one that has problems with either excessive moisture or poor drainage, you might want to consider either a raised bed for your garden or install some type of drainage system. One of the many beauties of herbs is that they can grow in some of the poorest soil conditions and they can also thrive in good soil. Know the specific soil requirements of the particular herbs that you plant and try to ammend the local soil to provide the optimum growing conditions.

The amount of time and money you have or want to spend on constructing your garden site will determine the extent to which you work with existing conditions or create totally new conditions. More often than not, the approach will be one of working somewhat with what you have and augmenting your site with soil ammending materials, new hardscape materials or interesting garden features.

A herb garden should be a thing of beauty to stimulate and delight the senses- not unlike any other work of art. As such, try to locate your herb garden where it can be easily viewed from a place where you spend a lot of time, like your kitchen, family room, sun-porch or patio. Once the site is selected, sit in the prime viewing location with a pencil and paper and create a sketch of the finished herb garden to roughly determine size and shape.

When contemplating the layout of the garden and the various plants, make sure to take into account such things as plant height and width, color and texture, bloom time and bloom color and plants that make naturally good companions. With the hundreds of herbs that are available; what to plant can be a dilemma. Our booklet "A Dozen Fun and Useful Herbs for Your Backyard Garden" provides basic and helpful information on twelve herbs that are the easiest to grow, the nicest to look at and are the most useful.

Anyone can grow herbs; all you need is a location with soil, sun, a little water and a desire to grow the most interesting, attractive and useful of all plants.