A warm cup of fragrant herbal tea on a cold day is nice, but even nicer when you are looking out the window at the garden where it grew.  Many of our favorite herbal tea ingredients are quite easily grown, harvested, and stored right at home. 

Growing your own tea gives you control over how the herbs were cared for, and provides a much fresher aroma and flavor than typical store-bought products. Adding a teapot to brew whole leaf tea is the final step in completely changing your herbal tea experience. 

Preparing the growing space

Gardeners and tea drinkers can grow significant amounts of their own ingredients, if not all of them, in a fairly small space. A large container on the deck or patio can produce quite a bit of mint or lemon balm. Even gardeners with only space for a few pots on the balcony can grow some of their own herbal teas. Many of these plants grow well whether in containers, raised beds, traditional garden beds, or even in grow bags.

Like planning a vegetable or flower garden, you’ll want to have an understanding of the sunlight, moisture, and soil needs of your plants. Most tea herbs and plants do best in full sunshine, at least six hours per day, but many will still produce foliage or flowers with partial sun, especially if their other needs are well met. Mint, for example, thrives in full sun but will still grow and produce delicious leaves even in partial sun with adequate moisture. Bee balm does well in partial sun as well. Matching your plants to the conditions you have available will make growing and maintaining your tea garden more successful and less work.

For container tea gardens, preparing the soil is as simple as making sure the pots or containers have adequate drainage and selecting a potting mix. Since I use so much, I make my own, but any good-quality potting mix will be sufficient. In-ground beds will benefit from compost worked into the soil before planting to provide increased fertility, structure, and drainage. 

While many common plants used for tea will do well with the standard inch-per-week recommendation we use in the vegetable garden, a few like it less moist. For plants that enjoy drier conditions, choose higher sites in the garden or, if drainage is a problem, build a raised bed or berm to plant them in. Grouping plants together by moisture needs simplifies watering. 

Common Plants for Herbal Teas

Deciding what to grow in a tea garden, especially with limited space, can be a bit daunting. The key is in starting with what you like. But how do you know? Most of us don’t drink single-plant teas, with a few exceptions like chamomile or peppermint. 

If you already have a selection of herbal teas in your cupboard, pull down all the ones you enjoy (this is a great chance to pitch those you don’t like) and check the ingredients, making a list. When an ingredient (a plant) shows up more than once, put an extra check mark next to it on the list. If in the end you have thirty ingredients, but only five have more than one check mark, you’ve got a place to start. Some of those ingredients may not grow where you are, but many can be planted and successfully grown in the home garden. 

It would take a book to list all possible herbs and flowers useful for making herbal teas, but these are a few of my favorites to get your creative thinking started.

Caution: The below list contains some herbs commonly grown for use in teas, but of course, any individual may be sensitive to one or more of these when consumed. If in doubt, consult a qualified healthcare professional. And of course, take care to avoid exposing your tea herbs to pesticides, herbicides, or other harmful substances.

• Mint and Peppermint: Mint and peppermint are herbal tea staples. While both are listed as full sun herbs, they do quite well in partial sun and are very cold-hardy perennials. I find peppermint is a bit more restrained (although it still spreads), but spearmint varieties are quite prone to escape. Grow them in a pot, or be prepared to pull out extras that pop up in the garden regularly.

• German chamomile: Most often used in tea blends for relaxation, German chamomile flowers provide a pleasant, lightly floral aroma and taste. The plant is an annual and grows best in somewhat drier locations in full sun. 

• Oregano: These leaves are a flavorful tea ingredient, but beware, it is almost too easy to grow. Planted in a garden bed, oregano will seem to behave during year one, but in my garden this perennial spreads faster than mint if left unchecked. However, if you let some oregano go to flower, the pollinators adore it. 

• Thyme: One of my favorite cooking herbs, thyme is also a lovely ingredient in teas, and the thyme you grow in the garden is so much more flavorful and aromatic than the store-bought product. Full sun and a drier site work best, but this herb will also grow in partial sun, especially in very hot climates.

• Lemon balm: You might mistake these leaves for mint until you bruise them and give them a sniff. They add a wonderful lemony citrus aroma and zing to herbal teas. Lemon balm is in the mint family and, while not as vigorous, will still pop up a few feet away. Transplant the volunteers back to an approved spot or dig up the volunteers and use them for tea as well. Lemon balm will grow quite well in partial sun with regular moisture.

• Rosemary: Use the leaves, preferably from younger shoots, to make a fantastic piney, citrusy tea alone or mixed with other ingredients. Rosemary prefers a drier, sunny site, and doesn’t do well in colder winters, so you may need to grow it as an annual or bring it inside for the winter. 

• Anise: This annual but often reseeding herb is used most often for its seeds, which provide a unique licorice flavor and scent you may already be familiar with when baking. It’s great when used on poultry and fish as well. 

• Lavender: Perhaps my favorite herbal tea ingredient, lavender is loved for a relaxing cup of tea. It can be slow to establish from seed, but worth the wait. Choose as sunny spot a little on the dry side. The fragrant flowers are an excellent addition to your tea pantry.

• Lemongrass: Similar in flavor to lemon balm, but with a different shape, this plant is a perennial in warmer climates or can be grown as an annual. The whitish lower stalks provide a lemony scent, and the plant doubles as an ornamental grass in the landscape. 

Harvesting and Storing Tea Herbs

The leaves and flowers are the two most common parts of the plant used for herbal teas, with the roots also being useful for some plants. For leaves, harvest before the plant flowers when aromatic oils are at their peak for best flavor. The youngest leaves are often the most flavorful. Take individual leaves or pinch off a portion of stem just above a node to encourage more growth. Harvest flowers just as they begin to open, but before they are fully in bloom. 

Many gardeners prefer to harvest leaves and flowers for tea in the morning, after the dew has dried, but before the heat of the day for best flavor. However, as so often occurs in gardening, we get busy. If the late afternoon is the time of day you have to get out there and gather, it will be fine. The important part is to get the harvest done before the plant blooms (for leafy tea) or before the flowers get old and lose their flavor. Whether flower or leaf, begin processing your harvest immediately.

When harvesting foliage, remember the general rule of only taking a third of the plant at a time. The exception to this is if the plant has gotten away from you and you’d like to reset it. Oregano is a prime example of this. If your oregano has all flowered, for which the bees will thank you, and you are after more leaves, give the entire plant a haircut in midsummer, snipping back about six inches from the ground. Water it well, and wait. With favorable weather, the new flush of tender green growth will be ready to harvest in a few weeks.

Tea herbs can be dried by hanging bunches in a well-ventilated area, or in a dehydrator. Once dried so they crumble easily, store tea herbs in airtight containers out of the light and label them. This might be the most important step in the entire process. You’d be surprised at how similar a bunch of dried herbs in jars can look six months later when you’ve forgotten which is which.