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Growing a tea garden invites wonderful slow living
If you love herbal tea, growing a tea garden can be an enjoyable garden. Although it does take a lot of fresh herbs to dry and become tea, the slow experience of harvesting and using herbs is rewarding.
Herbs are wonderful to smell & use, and many offer beautiful flowers
Herbs are often strong smelling too which makes them excellent companion planting for organic pest control
This post will cover
- Where to plant your tea garden
- List of herbal teas to grow
- Creating tea blends
- Sun tea
Where to plant your tea garden
When choosing herbal plants to grow for tea, you’ll want to select ones that you enjoy. Many of the herbs for a tea garden are perennials, so be mindful of where you place them in your garden design. I like to place large perennials like bee balm, mints and licorice mint for example on the outer edges of my garden. Certain herbs like chamomile are annuals but self sow easily. I planted ours in our herb spiral and they would self sow all over the place out of the bed!
Consider adding medicinal herbs for tea
Many herbal teas that we enjoy you can buy in the grocery store like mint, chamomile or licorice mint. Many herbs offer wonderful medicinal properties to them as well and can be made into a tea for when we get sick. You might have to learn more about herbalism, I’m slowly learning over time and adding more medicinal herbs to our garden.
Certain herbs you can steep for medicinal properties like sage
Great herbs for a tea garden
- German chamomille
- Mint – There are many choice of mint flavor. Apple mint, spearmint, peppermint, chocolate mint, there are many mints you can grow! Learn more about growing a mint garden.
- Agastache (licorice mint)
- Lemon Balm
- Tulsi Tea (Holy Basil)
- Lavender (recipe for Lavender + Chocolate Mint tea)
- Lemongrass
- Lemon Verbena
- Catnip
- Lavender
- Bee balm/Bergamot
- Borage
- Thyme
- Stevia
- Sage
- Rosemary
- Hibiscus (zone 8+)
Other useful plants you can make tea with
Other plants can be used to make your own tea. Some of these you might have to forage for or learn more with herbalism studies. Many of these are considered herbs
- Red raspberry leaves
- Clover
- Elderflowers
- Ginger
- Lemon
How to create herbal tea blends
One beautiful aspect of growing your own herbs for tea, is that you can create your own blends. You can play around with ratios and taste. We love mixing fresh lemon balm and mint together for a cooling tasting summer tea. Anything lemony tasting goes nicely with mint. Certain herbs like chamomille and lavender have a calming effect, others like mints have a cooling effect. Homespun seasonal living shows you how to create tea blends.
Sun tea
Sun steeped tea has a lovely summer feel to it. Often tea is used with boiling water to infuse the herbs into the water. The idea with sun steeped tea, is that the sun warms up the water for you after being in the sun for a few hours. Using hot water allows tea to steep quickly, sun steeped tea is a long slow infusion.
When choosing herbal plants for sun tea, it might take some playing around to get the right ratio.
If you were using tea bags, especially caffeinated ones, you won’t need to steep for a long. Most herbs however take 2 hours. Add fresh lemon, mint, lavender, borage!
My name is Isis Loran, creator of the Family Food Garden. I’ve been gardening for over 10 years now and push the limits of our zone 5 climates. I love growing heirlooms & experimenting with hundreds of varieties, season extending, crunchy homesteading and permaculture.
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