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A Tabor thyme plant or two deserve a place in your herb collection for a number of reasons. It's a perennial, and evergreen, so it'll carry on giving you brilliant rich-green, glossy aromatic leaves and stems for many years. The flowers are worth a mention, too, being cute and dainty and a real magnet for pollinators, especially bees, which love the small, open, pale purple/pink flowers: a little like a miniature, low-growing and looser lavender plant. To create a herb garden with real potential, take a look around our entire collection of herbs.
Make sure you give thyme a sunny spot and really sharp drainage: it is a Mediterranean plant, native to rocky hillsides. A pot filled with 50:50 mix of compost and horticultural grit is ideal, or plant it in a rockery. There's no need to fertilise, as poor soil is preferable for thymes. Just keep picking the leaves to keep the plant compact, and give it a trim after flowering.
Thymes combine well with lavender, rosemary, oregano, and other thyme varieties with contrasting flower colours. A wide terracotta pot filled with prostrate rosemary and a couple of thymes makes a lovely combination for a table decoration.
You can harvest leaves and stems throughout the growing season, from around April to October. Chopped and combined with lemon zest and olive oil, the leaves make a great marinade for halloumi (before frying) or feta cheese. Or add sprigs to stews and roasts for that gorgeous Mediterranean aromatic scent. If you're feeling adventurous, a little thyme is also great in cakes, cookies and summer fools, where its bright yet earthy notes bring a wonderful contrast to sweetness.
The ancient Greeks regarded thyme as the bringer of courage; they bathed in it and burnt it to benefit from its bravery-bringing qualities. In the Middle Ages, knights were given bunches of thyme, possibly for the same reason, or possibly because Thyme has anti-bacterial properties, which is always handy.