A Slowcooked Rabbit with Herbs

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I have been seriously considering growing more herbs. My problem is that the soil in this little garden is too rich. A decade of breaking down the 'good old London clay' with organic matter has made it a happier place for vegetables to grow but rendered it too rich for most herbs - especially those tough stemmed varieties such as thyme that need good drainage if they are not to rot from the roots up. I have a good, hot, sunny bed whose aspect is ideal, but in order to have the fine tilth and good drainage on which herbs thrive, I would need to lift the soil from the entire bed and replace it with something very different, a mixture light and full of grit. A Herculean task. So the herbs remain in pots, mostly of reclaimed terracotta, running down the back steps on to the stone terrace, each with a soil of their own. The downside is that they dry out quickly in hot, windy weather and there is too little protection for their roots during severe frosts. I have lost more thyme, chervil and tarragon than I care to remember. When any of these are planted in the rose bed, which contains a fairly light but dry soil, they get to live another day. Yes, of course I grow them to use in the kitchen, to perfume and flavour my cooking, but I grow them too for their leaf form, the lace-like fronds of chervil, for the scent of their leaves, the piercing lemonlime hit of verbena and the weirdly captivating smell of rue. For their flowers, particularly the Ascot hat of the red bergamot and the deep purple and yellow petals of the viola. For their folklore especially. The garden wouldn't be the same without the cheerful orange of the pot marigold or the tiny, pale-blue flowers of rosemary Sissinghurst. My garden would seem out of kilter with no majestic angelica or diminutive, laughing-faced heartsease. And no garden of mine could ever be without the rambling nasturtium - hardly a herb, but it peppers a salad. Possibly the main reason for planting herbs in my garden is simply to run my fingers through their leaves as I pass. A midnight walk up the garden path touching the oregano, the thyme, the golden marjoram, the sage, the verveine and the rue. There are herbs I don't grow. The nasty curry plant, the capricious sorrel, the sulky lavender (I long ago gave up on them, managing to kill every plant I have owned). Not to mention the wacky herbs such as mint that smells of pineapple or thyme that tastes of chocolate. What interest me are the herbs that smell the same as they did in medieval times, whose flavours and scents are truly timeless. At the end of each summer, once the nights start to smell of wood smoke and there is a warning of frost on the weather forecast, I try to use up as many of the soft herbs as I can, those that are unlikely to make it through the winter. A recipe may even include three or four, despite my normal preference for keeping things simple. There is rabbit tonight, a whole one jointed by the butcher into neat pieces. It seems a sensible way to use up the tarragon but also some rosemary prunings. The result is a tasty little casserole that would be rather good with chicken, if you don't fancy rabbit.