An Old World cottage-garden annual grown for daisy- to chrysanthemum-like flowerheads (3-4 inches across) in bright yellow through deep orange, often with a contrasting darker center disk. In cool climates it blooms over a long summer-to-fall window; in hot summers it tends to languish and may need a midseason cutback to rebloom. The somewhat bitter flowers and lance-shaped aromatic leaves are edible, and the petals lend color to soups, rice, and baked goods.

A low woody herb for sunny edges, between pavers, and herb-garden borders with pollinator-friendly summer flowers.

A fast, bushy annual culinary herb in the mint family (Lamiaceae), native from southeastern Europe to western Asia. NC State Extension describes an erect, multi-stemmed plant about 1.5 feet tall and 1-3 feet wide, with linear, gland-dotted, aromatic dark-green leaves and small lilac, pink, or white summer flowers. It grows rapidly — harvestable within a couple of months of sowing — and is prized for its mild, slightly peppery flavor. Grown as a warm-season annual, it wants full sun and sharp drainage and does poorly in damp soil or shade.

A tender Mediterranean culinary herb — a bushy little sub-shrub with reddish square stems and rounded, gray-green aromatic leaves that grows in an upright mound to 1-2 feet. Tiny white-to-pale-pink flowers open from knot-like bud clusters in summer, the trait behind the alternate name "knotted marjoram." Hardy only in USDA zones 9-10; everywhere colder it is grown as a warm-season annual or a pot herb brought in before frost.

The cultivated strawberry of grocery shelves and home gardens — a low, stoloniferous herbaceous perennial of hybrid origin (a cross of the South American Fragaria chiloensis and the North American F. virginiana). Dense mounding rosettes of toothed, three-parted leaves carry loose clusters of five-petaled white flowers in spring, which ripen into the familiar cone-shaped red aggregate fruits studded with seed-like achenes. Plants run on above-ground stolons that root at the nodes to form new plantlets, so a single planting knits into a patch.

A warm-weather annual of the carrot family grown in herb gardens for two distinct crops from one plant: the lacy, strong-scented foliage harvested young as cilantro, and the aromatic dried seed harvested as coriander. The plant bolts and flowers quickly in hot weather, throwing up showy white-to-pale-lavender umbels and a marked leaf dimorphism — broad scalloped lower leaves give way to fine, thread-like upper foliage on the flowering stems. Fast and easy from a direct sowing, it is best succession-planted for a steady leaf harvest before heat triggers bolting.