You're an ambitious gardener,
Ginny - you'll fit right in here! What is your usual lowest temp there in the winter?
Here are some of my experiences with herbs. I have some perennials - sage, rosemary, sweet marioram, Syrian oregano (thyme scented), tarragon, chives, and garlic chives. Rosemary is usually only hardy to around 20°f, maybe a little below, briefly - otherwise, it needs covered, or grown in a large pot, and brought in. Sweet marjoram and Syrian oregano hardy into the teens, cut down to the ground, but I take cuttings, just in case, and root them. Once, we got into the single digits, so I put a trash can over each crown, weighed down with bricks, and they survived. Regular oregano is more hardy, but also spreads more, and some consider it an invasive weed! You might want to put that in a container. And if you want to grow garlic chives, be forewarned - they re-seed and spread relentlessly! I had them in my herb bed, with regular chives, but they spread so quickly that I dug them out (and pulled those remaining as weeds, for a few years), and planted them behind my shed! I have 11 clumps of them, and they want to keep spreading. I don't know why the regular chives don't do this, as they also flower a lot, every spring (which are good in a lot of things!). Oh, I almost forgot about the mint patch - surrounded by concrete, so it can't spread, which it does, relentlessly! Grow isolated, or in a container. I have never had this killed by cold, even just below 0°, the one time it did that here.
The annual herbs I plant a lot in windowsill boxes (Jr Earthboxes), around my deck. I usually have a small cluster of regular chives, a curly parsley (flat-leaf I put in the herb bed, as it gets too many roots, for here, or hydroponics), which I start by seed in containers (in the herb bed, it re-seeds itself eventually), and dill I put in several places (re-seeds, too, and I get a lot of volunteers).
I also grow in deep-water hydroponics, in the off-season, so that I can have some of the herbs, as well as greens, year-round. For these, and those windowsill boxes, a smaller variety is better, instead of the larger varieties. Serrata and Gefo Fure are the two best I have found, and Siam Queen, for Thai basil. And for these, red epazote, and peppermint, I find the best way to get them for the inside, then again, for the outside, is to root the cuttings - much faster than starting seeds!
Something you might want to look into, for your higher up gardening - sub-irrigated planters. Something I have a lot of, along with two raised beds. Here is a photo from a couple of years ago, showing a number of them, how high off the ground they are, and how high the trellises start.
Line of 12 tomato plants, 5-29 by
pepperhead212, on Flickr
Good luck with your growing, and all your cooking with the results!