I think you've discovered that certain plants don't like close communal living, Sage and Rosemary being two of them; they quite appreciate their own large root-space.

Hey, thanks! I was really at a loss to figure out what was going on with my sage and rosemary. Given what you've said, I'm going to buy a seedling plant of each of these and try planting them directly in ten inch pots. Hopefully I'll have better luck on my second try.

You might try winter savory--one of my favorite cooking herbs.

I'll give that one a try. Thanks!

Any more recommendations, anyone?

I am very hard on plants. I buy them, I stick them in the ground, I go drink wine. So my plants must pretty much make it on their own, poor babes.

In my very wet-winter, insanely-dry-but-not-particularly-hot-summer climate, the herb that runs rampant over my entire 1-acre property is lemon balm. It grows in sun, it grows in shade, it thrives in rock-hard soil with absolute aridity. It is unkillable. I'm sure there's some good use for it, but I consider it a weed with the one saving grace of having a gorgeous fragrance.

My herb garden is a fairly sunny, completely neglected, dry, poor-soil space outside the kitchen door. Comfrey, lovage, rosemary, and oregano are most excellent in that location. Chives do well in the same garden until the rains stop, and then they look pretty peaked.

In the fairly neglected part of my vegetable garden (Ha! deer salad bar, is what I mean), which has good soil but which I don't water, fennel is doing fantastically well. Parsley self-seeded in the pea-gravel surrounding the raised bed, and is likewise thriving despite absolutely no tending.

Lavender is in a different, completely neglected, hot bed with dry soil, and it loves it there. Monkshood is in a completely neglected, shady bed with dry soil, and persists despite many tramplings by builders and painters. Like the lemon balm, Digitalis grows everywhere. Thyme grows in cracks between stone steps. Utterly neglected.

When I say "completely neglected", I mean COMPLETELY NEGLECTED. No watering. No fertilizing, no soil amending. Nothing. The dirt I stuck them in, the natural rainfall, a little weeding a couple of times a season, and that's it.

Sage, rosemary and lavender really, really hate to have constantly wet feet, so a self-watering pot is a no-no for them. People also read that sage is drought-tolerant, so they don't water it enough. If the drainage is excellent, it can tolerate a lot of water. But it can be a cantankerous plant anyway - it can look wonderful, and be dead the next day for no apparent reason.

If you have a regular rainful, most of the Mediterranean herbs can take a lot of neglect. It's when you don't get rain for 6 months or more over summer (for instance) than you might need to do something about it.

I'm a disabled person who has been ill for several months, unable even to go outside to my garden until the last week or so - my all-herb garden is doing just fine, although a friend came up during this week and did a bit of a tidy-up for me. I don't think there are any plants which can thrive outside their natural habitat without some care at some time - pruning, or whatever. If you get herbs which are indigenous to your area, they'll take care of themselves well enough to become weeds.

Potted plants, of course, are high maintenance. You absolutely cannot neglect those!

Marjoram is a must for me. Love the aroma and flavor! Pretty hardy too.
Have had mixed results with sage, but clary sage has done well. Rosemary and lavender are favorites. I've grown rosemary in pots and lavender from seed, but eventually transplant the larger ones into the garden. My thyme flourishes in full sun and the lemon balm just grows (and grows!)without any care at all. Can't get rid of the comfrey, even if I tried! LOL

Thank you all so VERY much!

I went to the nursery yesterday that has just about everything you can imagine. I noticed that even they, instead of their usual variety of 100 or so herbs, seemed now to only have around half that many, availability probably changing with the advancement of summer. I thought it would be nice to add something purely fragrant, although not necessarily edible, so I looked for some lemon balm. Unfortunately, they did not have this, but they did have several kinds of lavenders. I patricularly liked the Spanish lavender. They also had lovage, which I had never heard of before (thanks, surf_grrl), which seems like it would be 'interesting' to add to salad, and a variety of fennel that was silvery. Those are the three I've decided to go back for on Sunday.

They also had marjoram, which I'm definitely going to keep in mind to try in the future. I think also I'll wait awhile to try sage again, since it's 'cantankerous' (love that! hee hee), and I'll have a trio of newbies with whose needs I'll need to get aquainted.

Also wanted to mention that much to my surprise, my rosemary seems finally to be perking up. I regard this one as my 'special needs child' so it'll be nice if the new additions to my collection aren't too demanding. Having successes to build upon is very confidence building (although I have to admit that much learning also comes with making mistakes). :-)

Thanks again, all!