Fresh herbs can transform a recipe, filling a dish with the flavours of the Mediterranean. Apart from mint and parsley, which will both grow in shade, most herbs need lots of sunshine in order to thrive and develop strong flavours.

So what do you do space in your garden is limited or you only have a patio or balcony?

It's a subject to which Lesley Watson of New Hopetoun Gardens near Edinburgh has been giving a lot of thought lately. She has been listening to customers at the garden centre and responding to the changing ways in which they live and garden.

"A lot of people have very small gardens without space to devote to a herb garden while many others are renting and want to grow plants that they can take with them when they move," she says.

Her solution has been to design a Mediterranean herb tower, a sort of hi-rise garden that takes up very little space but which provides the ideal conditions for herbs to flourish.

"You can place it by the front door, if that's the only spot that gets sunshine, and, if you use lightweight containers it will sit happily on a balcony or roof garden, which can be a challenging environments, but which are perfectly suited to herbs, most of which grow naturally on exposed, rocky hillsides."

Making the herb tower is easy and why stop at one? You could create towers for different dishes or cuisines, filling them with rosemary, chives, coriander or any of the other delicious herbs that add so much flavour to cooking.

And what could be nicer than picking thyme to go straight onto the barbecue or threading lamb kebabs onto home-grown rosemary skewers?

Here's how to do it.

Step 1

Take three pots of different sizes (these are colourful Elho pots, one each 25 cm, 30cm and 40cm in diameter, but terracotta would work just as well) and partially fill with soil-based compost.

Step 2

Place the middle-sized pot inside the larger one and fill the gap between the two with one plant each of rosemary, sage, French parsley and curly parsley, packing compost between them and firming in well.

Step 3

Place the smallest pot on top of the tower, filling the gap in the second layer with golden marjoram, pot marjoram and oregano and infilling with compost as before.

Step 4

Place one plant each of variegated lemon thyme, broadleaf thyme and garden thyme in the top pot, filling with compost to within 2cm of the rim.

Step 5

Place the tower in a sunny spot and water well.

Step 6

Turn the tower regularly so that all the plants grow evenly and water regularly, which could be twice a day in the middle of summer. Pick the herbs as required.