Growing up, my Aunt Susan and Uncle Greg used to keep herbs for cooking in their backyard and coming from a family who didn’t garden at any level, it always seemed a little like magic when they would ask me to go cut some herbs to use for dinner. I would go out back, find the herb that looked like what she described to me, cut some and she would use it, right then and there. Almost 30 years later, it still sticks with me as my first memories of home gardening and I think of those magical moments often as I teach my own children about herbs and gardening.

I had never heard of a tea herb garden until I went on a Sustainable Backyard Tour here in St. Louis last year. One of the homes had a section of their garden labeled “tea garden” and I stooped down low to see what they were growing that made it a tea garden. Some of the herbs in the space I knew from cooking but others I had never heard of and had no clue even existed. There was so much else to see in his tiny backyard that I didn’t think much more about it until I went to visit my in-laws and my niece made me a cup of tea by simply cutting a stalk of her chocolate mint herb, placing it in boiling water to steep, and then pouring it into a cup with some honey. It was possibly the best cup of tea I have ever had. I realized that this must be how that man on the backyard tour used his. I had assumed he harvested them, then dried them all, crushed them up and then used them in a steeping ball. It seemed like a lot of work. I didn’t know that it was as simple as cutting the herbs, dropping them in a cup and letting them steep. It inspired me to plant my own tea herb garden this year and here we are. I bought some herbs that sounded good to me. I ended up with a bunch (because I couldn’t control myself at the garden center) and am not sure which ones I will use most in my tea but I figured I would use this first year to experiment with some and then seeing what I liked the most would dictate what I plant for next year.

Here’s what I have:

1) mint

2) chocolate mint

3) strawberry mint

4) pineapple mint

5) lemon balm (planted closer to our porch since it also has mosquito repelling properties)

6) lavender

7) pineapple sage

8) basil, rosemary, thyme, sage (I will probably use most of these for cooking but some might end up in my tea blends)

9) stevia (I can tear up these leaves and add them to any cup as a natural sweetener. How cool is that?)

10) valerian (this is my biggest experiment as the roots are harvested and used in tea for a bit of “nature’s chill pill”. I don’t know how this is going to go but I’m giving it a shot this year).

I’m hoping that I will be able to get my act together and harvest as much as I can as it grows and whatever I don’t immediately use, I want to dry and store it in order to make tea from my herbs throughout the year, even in winter. We shall see. Often times, my plans don’t go as I hope but I’ve got to go in with lofty goals to give me something to work toward.

I hope you give this a try, even if it’s just to grow a simple pot of chocolate mint for an afternoon cup of tea or to slice up and sprinkle over strawberries and fresh whipped cream or sprinkle on top of your coffee grounds before you brew your morning cup. Any time we grow our own food in our own dirt, it increases our appreciation of our world and what nature has to offer us and renews our desires to be a part of its healing.

Some notes: I chose to put them in pots because I need the space in the garden beds for my cut flowers and veggies. I tried to keep the mints separate from each other as I’ve heard if they are too close, with pollination, they begin to lose their subtle flavor notes. Planting them in pots also keeps the invasive mint from spreading all over my garden beds. Too much of a good thing is just too much. I will make adjustments with their pots as they grow and my desires change (i.e. maybe I don’t want as much pineapple mint as I thought so it will stay in a small pot while the strawberry mint gets a larger one…)