Even though we can usually buy all of the fresh vegetables and herbs we need to prepare our favorite dishes, some cooks are compelled to plant kitchen gardens as well.
Master gardener Bill Colvard said: It is like having a well-stocked pantry. If you are cooking and there is something you need, you can find it right outside the door.
For Pat Skaggs a kitchen garden is a way to combine her two favorite pastimes – cooking and gardening.
She said: I just HAVE to garden all year.
She especially likes being able to clip sprigs of rosemary, thyme, parsley and winter savory – all evergreens in our area -- in the cold months.
Tomatoes such as Park Whopper and Juliet, Blue Lake pole green beans, cucumbers and zucchini are in the garden every summer.
Skaggs, who will become president of the Memphis Herb Society in July, said: Garlic is another thing I always have. If you have never tasted garlic from the garden, you are missing something.
She describes it as sweeter and less pungent than the garlic in the supermarket.
For Catherine Lewis a first time kitchen garden is a planter box about 1-by-6 feet, just big enough for a bit of mesclun leaf lettuces and a couple of basil plants.
She has not quite gotten enough for a salad yet, said the president of the Memphis Area Master Gardeners.
Lewis, who is pictured above, also has other herbs, such as rosemary, growing in beds in her back yard.

Colvard, who once tended a huge vegetable garden, is now content with a smaller back yard garden of edibles in Cordova. During the winter, he commandeered the iris bed favored by his wife, Sally, and planted mustard, kale and collard greens.
He said: When we need a side dish I go out and cut some greens and then sautée them with some garlic and olive oil.
You can not do that with iris leaves!
Any kitchen garden of his will also have salad or cherry tomatoes, slicing tomatoes, a hill or two of squash and a couple of cucumber vines.
Angela Mullikin grows cucumbers, too, usually a burpless variety.
She said: There is nothing like a fresh picked cucumber.
To have enough basil to make lots of pesto she scatters seeds for two Italian types: Genovese and Napoletano.
Several types of tomatoes are always in her garden, too: Romas, cherries and slicers like Better Boys.
Some of the tomatoes along with basil leaves from the garden go into the tomato jam to give as gifts and to use herself. She adapted the recipe from others until it tastes the way she likes it.
Neither Mullikin, Colvard or Skaggs would be without parsley – both curly and flat leaf Italian.
It stays green and edible all through the winter.
Mullinkin said: It is a subtle herb that enhances other herbs when you blend them together.
The curly type is so attractive it is used in bulb beds and containers at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens. Lots of edibles – hot peppers, Bright Lights Swiss chard and beets -- are attractive enough to mix in beds with ornamentals.
Gail Banks, president of the Memphis Herb Society, loves salads from her De Soto County garden made with mixed mesclun greens, cilantro, chives and Italian parsley.
When her chives produce their lavender pompom flowers, she adds a few of those as well.
She also grows peppery nasturiums and adds both the colorful flowers and the leaves to salads.
She likes to stuff nasturtium blossoms with a cream cheese mixture and serve them as appetizers.
The three or four different kinds of mint in her garden are used in fruit salads, lemons, iced teas and herbal beverages.
Her tomatoes are all heirloom varieties.
For Banks, a rose is not just a pretty flower. She uses the petals in salads, jams, syrups and jellies. She grows old garden type roses that do not need spraying with fungicides or pesticides.
Banks said: It is wonderful to be able to go outside and see and touch beautiful plants. But it is ever better to bring them in and have their fresh tastes on your table.”