This is the great herb changeover time, when the annuals die back, others like peppermint and chives turn dormant and other herbs lose much of their flavour. Now it's time to turn from basil to winter savoury.

Autumn is one of the best times to plant a winter herb garden, the sort you'll pick from every day to lift food from the ordinary to the luscious. The snails are slowing down, the soil is moist and there is still time for your herbs to settle for the winter.

Winter Savoury

This looks like a twiggy thyme, small bright green and incredibly fragrant leaves. Unlike many other herbs, its flavour is more, not less, intense in winter. Give it a pot of its own – it's easily smothered – and loves sun and moisture, but let it dry out between waterings. Use wherever you might use thyme, from stews to stuffings to pizza. I often make it into a small bunch, tied together with one of its own stems, so it can be fished out before anyone chews on a tough leaf.

Rosemary

Canberra is perhaps the world's rosemary hedge capital. Rosemary loves hot, sunny, droughty summers and Canberra does those stunningly. (I use the word advisedly: too much Canberra summer and you pass out with sunstroke.) Try a hedge around your clothes-line, along the front fence or let prostrate rosemary spill out over hanging baskets or pots.

Rosemary can be so strong your food can taste almost medicinal. I flavour a roast chicken by putting branches on the lower shelf of the oven, so the whole oven and, indeed, the kitchen and the house, are scented, but the meat is not too highly flavoured, nor are there black crispy bits in the gravy. (Or if there are, they're from the pumpkin)

Thyme

Always sniff thyme before you buy it. Some are much more flavourful than others. I love Turkey thyme and orange peel thyme for stuffings, winter chicken soup, or making vegetable stock. Again, tie it into a bunch for easy removal – that way you don't have to strip the leaves from the stems. Once again, you need sun for the best-flavoured thyme. Every few years cover the bare wood branches with new soil to encourage new roots.

Oregano

Oregano loses much of its oomph in our winters, but that can be a good thing. Winter oregano makes a superb salad green, used lavishly with black olives, thinly sliced red onions, soaked in ice water for an hour if you want to remove some pungency, and dressed with olive oil and a touch of vinegar, salt and lemon juice, verjuice or vinegar. Oregano may grow in dappled shade, but will just taste vaguely green, not succulent and herbish.

While you won't get much of a crop from your new herbs till next summer (and the following winter), hopefully they'll inspire you to plant more herbs in spring – basil, Thai basil, peppermint, coriander and dill; culinary mint for mint sauce or jelly, chamomile for its flowers, lemon grass for its succulent stems and savoury leaves, but which needs frost protection in our climate.

But, above all, pick a herb once a day, add to the chicken soup cold and flu reliever. Herbs not only add flavour to life, they keep you in touch with the just what is happening in the ever changing, ever fascinating soap opera of the garden.