I don’t have a garden to speak of, and I rent, so it’s all in pots. I’ve had luck with chives, basil, lavender, and mint. It’s pretty hard to kill mint, unless it’s in direct blazing sun for days with no water. But it needs its own pot or it’ll choke everything else. I had oregano, but it became an ant colony, which was disgusting (thousands of tiny black ants!), and it is now gone as far from my deck as possible.

I scoured the internet for help on keeping it alive. nothing.

Others I have done with limited space are thyme, rosemerry, oregano, and sage. But the easiest by far was the mint

I might also suggest sage (particularly the exceedingly vigorous Hybrid #4 cultivar, if you can find it) and tarragon. Both are better fresh than dried (tarragon in particular being utterly useless in dry form), and both are perennial and come back bigger and stronger in their second year.

Rosemary is a perennial, which is a point in its favor. I’m a fan of things I don’t have to replant every year.

i’ve also got chives, thyme, rosemary and sage. can’t grow coriander because the snails find it too tasty and i end up on these deranged vendettas where i get up at 2am with a torch to spring them (and squish them).

I suppose variety of the plant might make a difference, but that’s getting in over my head. Good luck!

(The first paragraph of this recipe post is about how much the blogger loves Australia. So extra goodness for you.)

Not an herb, but I just got The Urban Homestead book, and they also recommend beans–you can thread a piece of fishing line for a climber and they grow up it. Plus, as long as you keep picking them, they grow well into fall. (If you stop picking them, they decide, oh, harvest is over.)

Me, myself, I also grow mint (two kinds), parsley, thyme, and marjoram. (the landlord has huge bushes of rosemary in the back, so I skip that.) I jut bought some lemon balm *and* lemon verbena, and I’m growing borage and chervil from seed just to see if I can.

I have the hardest time with thyme; there have been seasons when I have gone through three plants by the time winter comes by. This current plant has lasted a long time, though, so I have hope.

Despite the fact that I keep a *lot* of herbs (in pots on the porch, fwiw), I am not at all a green thumb. I just water twice a week, every day if it’s hot, and that’s more or less it. I will second the note about unglazed clay pots drying out very fast, and to take that into account. I bought glazed pots for just this reason.

http://www.shopping.com/xPC-Not_Known_Set_of_4_Handblown_Glass_Self_Watering_Bulbs

I find these to be really helpful if you tend to be lackadaisical about watering (I am!).

We bought a bunch of herbs recently and when I picked up the Rosemary my mom said it would be really hard to grow but it’s managing to somehow stay alive better than most (probably because it wants to spite her in some petty planty way)

Of course, my and my family can’t grow anything for beans. We all have BLACK thumbs.

I thought rosemary was easy too, but I think I’ve killed a couple. Sadly. Oh, chives are good too…

Knowing how much sun you get will help determine how many plants, and what kind, will survive. If you only have one window of full sun, plan accordingly. (And buy one of those hanging-arm things you can screw into the window frame, so that the plants don’t have to all jostle each other on the windowsill.)

I regularly raise basil, thyme, and rosemary. I don’t raise any kind of parsley or cilantro any more, because the cat eats them up. Because I have a back stoop, I have tomatoes; but I also have a landlord who waters them when I forget.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/patiscool/2215248966/sizes/l/in/set-72157605864098096/

If you are north facing then you might want to put a water monitor on it since they may not use as much.

Just remember that pots dry out really fast particularly if you used potting soil versus REAL soil in them. Clays in real soil will hold more water longer but have other problems. So if your soil was ‘light’ you have to be water happy. Also, sometimes they look dead when they ain’t…