A north-facing balcony, a courtyard overshadowed by next door's wall, a window ledge that only catches sun at teatime — none of these rule out a herb garden. Mint, parsley and chives are plants of the woodland edge, happiest with shelter and a few hours of gentle light rather than a Mediterranean baking. Give them decent compost, a pot with room to root, and a watering habit you actually keep to, and you will be cutting leaves from spring well into autumn.

The three herbs worth starting with

These are the reliable performers in lower light, and between them they cover most kitchen jobs.

• Mint is the most shade-tolerant of the trio and almost impossible to kill. It does, however, run: underground stems will fill a pot within a season and strangle anything sharing it. Give mint its own container, 25–30cm across, and repot or divide it every spring. Spearmint and Moroccan mint are the best for cooking and for tea.
• Parsley has a deep taproot, so it resents being moved and wants a pot at least 25cm deep. Flat-leaf has more flavour than curly, though curly copes slightly better with poor light. Treat it as an annual or short-lived biennial: sow fresh each spring rather than coaxing an exhausted plant through a second year.
• Chives are the toughest of the three and will produce usable leaves with only three or four hours of sun. They are hardy, clump-forming and quick to regrow after cutting. Lift and divide congested clumps every couple of years.

If you have space for a fourth pot, chervil, lemon balm and wild rocket all manage in part shade and give you something different to pick.

Pots, compost and drainage

Shade usually comes with damp, and damp plus cramped roots is what kills container herbs. Start with drainage and work upwards. A 20–30cm pot is a sensible size for a single plant; anything smaller dries out too quickly in a windy spell and heats up fast in a brief burst of sun.

• Use a peat-free multipurpose compost and mix in roughly a fifth by volume of horticultural grit or perlite. This keeps the compost open through wet spells.
• Stand pots on feet or flat stones so water drains freely and slugs have less easy access. Empty saucers after heavy rain rather than letting roots sit in water.
• Group pots together. Plants shelter one another from wind, and a cluster of foliage holds a little humidity without becoming stagnant.
• Refresh the top 5cm of compost each spring, or repot entirely if the roots have circled the pot.

Watering when the light is low

Shaded compost dries more slowly than sunny compost, but small pots in a breeze still lose moisture quickly, and mint is a thirsty plant. Push a finger two knuckles deep; if it feels dry, water until it runs from the base, then stop. Judging by weight is quicker once you have the feel of it — a well-watered pot is noticeably heavy.

Water in the morning where you can, so excess moisture has the day to drain away. Little and often suits mint in summer; chives prefer to dry out a little between waterings; parsley sits between the two. If plants are limp at eight in the morning, water at once. If they flag at four in the afternoon and recover by evening, that is simply heat and they need nothing.

Feeding and cutting to keep leaves coming

From April to September, feed every two to three weeks with a general-purpose liquid feed at half the strength recommended on the bottle. Shade-grown plants grow more slowly, so they need less, and overfeeding produces soft, sappy growth that mildews easily.

• Pinch out mint tips just above a pair of leaves to keep plants bushy and stop them running to flower.
• Cut chives down to 2–3cm to trigger a fresh flush of leaves. Snip the purple flower buds off unless you want them for salads.
• Harvest parsley by cutting the outer stems at the base, leaving the crown to produce more.
• Never take more than a third of a plant at once, and give it a week or two before picking again.

Troubles in a shaded corner

The two problems you are most likely to meet are powdery mildew on mint and slugs. Mildew appears when roots dry out and air sits still around crowded stems — water consistently, thin the clump, and trim away affected leaves. Slugs and snails thrive in damp shade, so raise pots onto feet, keep the area clear of fallen leaves, and patrol after dark with a torch. Pale, stretched, leggy growth means a plant wants more light: rotate pots weekly and shift them to the brightest spot you have.

A simple year-round routine

In spring, repot, refresh compost and start feeding. Through summer, water daily in warm spells and pick regularly. In autumn, cut back on feeding as growth slows and move parsley to the most sheltered spot against a wall. Chives and mint die back over winter and are perfectly hardy outdoors in their pots, though mint benefits from having its pot tucked against a wall so the roots do not freeze solid. Cut the old foliage down in late winter and wait for the first green shoots.