Create your own tea garden

Shop-bought, dried and packaged herbal tea pales beside the fresh variety culled from the garden, so perhaps it’s time to grow your own, says Anne Swithinbank

- Anne Swithinbank

WHILE watching my family foraging for what they call ‘garden tea’, I realised that our fenced potager style kitchen plot also serves us well as a tea garden. When we first moved here and made this productive space, my late father grew crops allotment-style. Since then, it has gradually filled with fruit trees, herbs and other edible plants with crops grown in the gaps left between. So what is this ‘garden tea’ and can anyone grow it?

The proper name for herbal teas fresh or dried is a tisane. What we refer to as ‘garden tea’ is the leaves and flowers from a range of plants, including what some folk would call weeds, gathered from plants growing in our garden. They are steeped in water just off the boil and drunk without milk and sugar. Regular tea is the dried green or cured black leaves of Camellia sinensis, a Chinese evergreen shrub related to the showy camellias grown for their flowers.

Using the right plants

Anyone can make garden tea, but you need the confidence to identify plants and differentiate from any that might be poisonous. Most gardens will already contain several candidates for a tisane, but those new to gardening might need a knowledgeable friend or relative to help check these.

Another way is to buy new seed or plants (preferably grown organically) so you know what you’ve got. Most grow happily in containers and won’t take up much space. While most people can correctly identify mint, lemon balm, rosemary, lavender and dandelion petals, some might be unsure of sticky weed and yarrow.

Grow and make your own