Best Herbs for Apartments: What Should You Grow?

Walk into a garden center and choosing herbs can suddenly become much more complicated than expected.

Basil looks tempting. Mint smells wonderful. Parsley seems useful. Then there are chives, thyme, oregano, rosemary and a dozen other plants competing for a place on your windowsill.

So which are the best herbs for apartments?

There isn't one perfect list for every home.

The best herb for your apartment is one that matches the light and space you actually have, fits your level of experience and — perhaps most importantly — is something you'll actually use.

A sunny apartment can support herbs that may struggle in a darker home. A beginner may enjoy a forgiving plant more than one that demands constant attention. And if you cook with basil three times a week but never use rosemary, that should influence your choice too.

Instead of trying to grow everything, let's narrow down what makes sense for your apartment.

What Makes an Herb Good for an Apartment?

Growing indoors changes the conditions herbs have to work with.

There may be less light than outdoors, less airflow and less room for large containers. Your plants also have to share their space with everything else that belongs in an apartment.

A useful apartment herb therefore tends to have several advantages.

• It grows well in a container.
• It can produce useful harvests without taking over the room.
• Its light requirements match a location you can realistically provide.
• It responds well to regular harvesting.
• Its care requirements fit your routine.

You don't need a herb to score perfectly on every point.

You simply want the plant and your apartment to be a reasonably good match. Also see our list of the best herbs to grow indoors.

Start With the Light in Your Apartment

Before choosing herbs, look at your growing space.

Where is your brightest usable window?

Does it receive direct sun for part of the day, or is the room bright without much sunlight actually reaching the leaves?

This matters because herbs don't all respond to indoor light in the same way.

Basil, for example, is much more satisfying when it receives plenty of light. Other herbs can be more forgiving when conditions are bright but less than ideal.

If your apartment has limited natural light, don't choose a demanding herb and then spend the next month wondering why it looks unhappy.

Choose the plant for the conditions rather than trying to force the conditions to suit the plant.

We'll look separately at low-light herbs that thrive in less-than-perfect apartment conditions in a dedicated guide.

Choose Herbs You'll Actually Use

Growing an herb you never harvest isn't particularly useful.

Before buying a plant, think about what regularly appears in your kitchen.

Do you make pasta dishes that could use fresh basil?

Do you add mint to drinks or cooking?

Would fresh parsley disappear into meals every week?

Would you regularly snip chives over eggs, potatoes or salads?

Your cooking habits are one of the easiest ways to shorten a long list of possible herbs.

A plant you frequently harvest also gives you more opportunities to learn how it grows back.

Some Herbs Are Easier Than Others

If this is your first indoor herb garden, difficulty matters.

Some herbs tolerate small mistakes better than others. Others become disappointing quickly when their light, watering or container isn't right.

There's nothing wrong with choosing the easiest option first.

Success with one forgiving plant teaches you more than struggling with six demanding ones at once.

If simplicity is your priority, our future guide to the easiest herbs for apartments will compare the most beginner-friendly choices in more detail.

Good Apartment Herbs at a Glance

Several familiar culinary herbs can work well indoors when their needs are matched to the right location.

Here's a simple starting point rather than a definitive ranking:

This isn't meant to answer every question about every herb.

We'll compare the best herbs to grow indoors in a separate guide, where the differences between the main candidates can be explored properly.

Basil: Productive but Hungry for Light

Basil is often one of the first herbs people imagine growing on a kitchen windowsill.

There's a good reason for that.

A healthy basil plant can provide repeated harvests, smells wonderful and is useful in an enormous range of dishes.

But basil is not a plant to hide in a dim corner.

Give it a bright location and enough room to grow, and harvest it regularly rather than treating it as a decorative houseplant.

Basil has enough quirks to deserve its own article, so we'll cover how to grow basil successfully indoors separately.

Mint: Vigorous and Best in Its Own Pot

Mint has almost the opposite personality.

Once it's happy, the challenge may be keeping up with it rather than persuading it to grow.

Its vigorous growth makes mint attractive for an apartment herb garden, especially if you use it regularly.

Give it its own container rather than squeezing it into a mixed herb pot.

That also makes its watering, roots and growth easier to manage independently.

Our dedicated guide to growing mint indoors in containers will cover that setup in detail.

Parsley: Patient and Practical

Parsley may not have basil's dramatic leaves or mint's enthusiasm, but it's an extremely practical herb to have close to the kitchen.

It's useful in many dishes and fits neatly into an indoor container garden.

Parsley can reward patience rather than constant intervention.

Give it a suitable pot, good light and consistent care, then let the plant establish itself.

We'll cover the details in our parsley indoors care guide rather than turning this overview into a complete parsley-growing manual.

Chives: Compact and Easy to Harvest

Chives make a lot of sense when space is limited.

Their upright growth doesn't demand a huge area, and you can cut what you need while allowing the plant to continue growing.

They're also useful in small amounts, which suits the scale of an apartment garden nicely.

If chives are high on your list, our chives indoors grow guide will cover containers, light, watering and harvesting in more detail.

What If Your Apartment Has Low Light?

A less sunny apartment doesn't automatically rule out growing herbs.

It does mean you should be more selective.

Start with the brightest location you actually have and choose herbs that are more tolerant of those conditions.

Also keep your expectations realistic: a plant growing with less light may not produce as quickly or as densely as the same herb in a brighter location.

If your available light is genuinely too weak, supplemental lighting can open up more possibilities.

We'll deal with herb selection for these conditions separately in Low-Light Herbs That Thrive.

Choose With Pets in Mind

Cats and dogs add another consideration to plant selection.

Don't assume that every culinary herb humans eat is automatically appropriate around pets.

Check the exact plant before bringing it into a home where an animal may chew the leaves, dig in the pot or otherwise investigate it.

Placement matters too. A sunny windowsill that looks perfect for your herbs may already be your cat's favorite seat.

Our dedicated pet-safe culinary herbs list will focus on choosing individual herbs for homes with pets.

For the broader question of arranging plants and gardening supplies safely around cats and dogs, see our existing Pet-Safe Herb Garden Basics guide.

Build Your Herb Collection One Plant at a Time

The best apartment herb garden doesn't need to contain every herb you cook with.

Start with two or three plants that match your light and your kitchen.

Watch how they respond.

Harvest them.

Learn which pots dry quickly and which locations produce the strongest growth.

Then expand.

If your priority is getting frequent harvests as quickly as practical, we'll also compare fast-growing herbs for cutting in a dedicated guide.

Choosing a few suitable herbs is much more useful than filling a windowsill with plants that don't suit the conditions.

If you're completely new to the process and want to review the setup before choosing your plants, return to Getting Started With Indoor Herb Gardening.

Once you're ready to compare individual candidates, continue with Best Herbs to Grow Indoors