Tea Herbs

Any landscape can be tweaked to include low-­maintenance plants chosen for their value for making tea. I suppose any broth made by steeping plant parts in hot water can be called a tea, but a truly satisfying tea begins with an enticing aroma and then delivers complex flavors in every sip. All of the plants discussed from Catnip to Stevia — and dozens more — are imbued with flavor compounds that readily dissolve in hot water to produce tasty, aromatic teas. Many of these teas have healing properties, too.

The key to happiness in growing herbs for tea is to find plants that suit your climate so well that they cannot be held back, producing an abundance of easy-to-dry foliage with little investment of time and energy. Once you get to know the tea herbs your site and soil want to grow, the rest is easy — harvest and dry each tea herb in its season, and store the dried herbs in airtight jars in a cool, dark place. Once you have a store of dried tea herbs, you can mix up blends that feature the different flavors of your favorite tea plants. I make tea in quart canning jars, using about a half cup of dried herbs per quart of tea. It is easier to strain loose tea through a strainer after steeping than to try to contain dry herbs in a tea ball.

The queen of tea herbs is mint, which comes in forms to suit every taste. See Managing Your Mints to review the best choices. Once you have chosen a mint or two, consider the six plants, from Catnip to Stevia, which always give satisfying results when grown for tea. Twenty more good tea plants are listed.here.

Catnip

(Nepeta cataria)

Catnip looks like a big, furry mint, and it is. In addition to hosting compounds that please cats, catnip leaves brew into a mild lemon-mint tea that complements the fruity flavor of chamomile. The two herbs are often combined to make a tea that helps settle the mind in preparation for sleep. Small amounts of catnip tea are an old remedy for colic in babies, too.

In the garden, catnip grows as a short-lived perennial or reseeding annual. Plants regrow quickly after stems are harvested, so each plant has a high yield potential. As long as you let one plant hold a few flower spikes until they turn brown, sufficient seeds will be shed to give rise to volunteer seedlings in spring, which you can dig and move to where you want them to grow. When allowed to bloom freely during the second half of summer, catnip blossoms attract a huge variety of bees and beneficial insects to the garden.

Chamomile

(Matricaria recutita)

Chamomile is a cold-hardy annual that covers itself with small yellow-and-white flowers that smell of green apples, and these flowers are dried and made into tea. Chamomile’s fruity, floral flavors are mild, so it is often paired with mints to create a satisfying tea widely believed to promote relaxation and sleep.

To get started with chamomile, start seeds for about six plants indoors in late winter, grow them under lights, and set them out under cloches about 6 weeks before your last frost date. Allow the ferny plants to grow freely until they bloom in late spring or early summer. Use scissors to snip off perfect blossoms, and dry them on a screen in a warm, dry place or in a dehydrator. Harvest flowers from each plant at least twice, but then allow some blossoms to stay on the plants until they shatter. Each mature chamomile blossom contains hundreds of tiny seeds, and chamomile easily sheds enough seeds to return as self-sown seedlings for a second year. You can further help chamomile reseed by piling the pulled plants (which are probably holding thousands of ripe seeds) where you would like to see chamomile seedlings appear the following season. This can be a temporary nursery bed, because chamomile seedlings are easy to dig and move to another location.

Lemon Balm

(Melissa officinalis)

Lemon balm tea has been used to manage anxiety since the Middle Ages, and lemon balm may have antiviral properties as well. Lemon balm’s flavor can’t carry a tea on its own, but add a few crushed blackberries and a stevia leaf to a quart batch, and you have the start of something good.

Lemon balm is easy to love in the garden because it looks rather handsome through the first half of summer, growing into a luminous mound of slightly hairy green leaves. Two plants are plenty to grow for tea. Start cutting 6- to 8-inch-long branches for drying when the plants are a foot tall; you should get a second cutting before the plants insist on blooming, furnishing nectar to honeybees and other insects for 2 months or more. Established plants persist for a couple of years, then disappear, but not without leaving behind a few self-sown offspring. If you’d rather not take a chance of losing your lemon balm, take a division from your mother clump in early summer and plant it in a new site.

Add a few crushed blackberries and a stevia leaf to a quart batch of lemon balm tea, and you have the start of something good.

Monarda

(Monarda didyma)

Monarda, also known as bee balm, is a native American woodland mint, more popular as a perennial flower than as a tea herb. It can be grown as both, and it is possible that harvesting one-half to one-third of the stem tips in late spring, as a tea herb, enhances the plant’s performance as a flower by prolonging bloom time and improving air circulation around the remaining stems. Improved air circulation discourages powdery mildew, which is a persistent fungal disease for all but a few resistant varieties of monarda.

Monarda leaves breathe menthol notes into herb teas, and fully mature leaves in particular yield a bold, full-bodied beverage. If you grow the plants primarily for tea, grow at least three plants, which mature into clumps 3 feet across. You can harvest and dry bee balm flowers, too, but I find it impossible to take them from the many bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds that visit the blossoms from dawn to dusk. Instead, find places for monarda along woodland edges or in partial shade cast by buildings. I grow red, pink, and lavender strains, and I love them all, but hummingbirds and butterflies seem to like the lavender blossoms best.

Monarda leaves breathe menthol notes into herb teas, and older leaves in particular yield a bold, full-bodied beverage.

Raspberries

(Rubus species)

Raspberries grown for their delicious fruit deserve space in the landscape, but even in poor fruit years you can harvest raspberry leaves as tea herbs. In late spring, just as the plants bloom, pick individual leaflets that have darkened to medium green. Harvest leaves again in late summer, this time from new canes that grew in the current season. Again, favor mature, fully green leaves over tender new growth, which has fewer flavor compounds.

Dried raspberry leaves mix well with mints and other herbs like fennel seed and nettles. By itself, raspberry leaf tea is a popular supplement among women in pursuit of more regular periods and those trying to get pregnant.

Stevia

(Stevia rebaudiana)

Stevia, also called sweet leaf plant, is indispensable to the tea gardener. Two fresh leaves will sweeten a quart of herb tea without adding calories, and the leaves are easy to dry, too. Fresh stevia brewed into tea lacks the chemical taste often found in commercial products. The key to using stevia is to use less, not more. In the garden, two to four plants will provide plenty of leaves for sweetening teas and other beverages.

A tender perennial, stevia is killed by temperatures cold enough to freeze the soil, so it is reliably winter hardy only to Zone 8 or warmer locations in Zone 7. Elsewhere, you can bring plants indoors for the winter, or simply buy a couple of new plants from a local greenhouse grower each spring. Do not waste your time trying to sprout and grow stevia seeds, which have low germination rates and grow very slowly. When you buy a plant, you can start picking stevia leaves immediately.

The Real Tea Plant

Commercial black tea is grown from a semi-tropical evergreen shrub, Camellia sinensis. Young leaves become green tea, while older ones are processed into darker teas. This species is hardy only to Zone 8, but a cultivar from Russia called ‘Sochi’ is worth trying in a protected site as far north as Zone 6.

Twenty More Plants to use in Teas

Once you have a few essential tea plants in place, start experimenting with the plants listed below, which can be grown as tea herbs for blending or used therapeutically for a variety of conditions.

Plant	Parts Used	Uses and Medicinal Properties
Alfalfa (Medicago sativa)	Leaves, flowers	Nutritious green tea, good for blending with other herbs.
Burdock (Arctium lappa)	Roots	Dried roots provide a bitter note in teas; used in some detoxification therapies.
Calendula (Calendula officinalis)	Flower petals	Orange or yellow petals add a colorful touch and nutritional boost to pale teas.
Chicory (Cichorium intybus)	Roots	When chopped and roasted, bitter chicory roots can be used as a coffee substitute.
Clovers (Trifolium species)	Leaves, flowers	Leaves impart a slight acidic tang; tea from leaves and flowers is used to moderate menopausal symptoms.
Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)	Leaves, roots	Dried leaves can be blended with other herbs; slow-roasted roots are used as coffee or chai tea substitute.
Echinacea (Echinacea species)	Leaves, roots, flowers	Boosts immune system functioning and may shorten the duration of colds and flu.
Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare)	Leaves, seeds	Imparts anise flavor to teas, good for digestion and sore throats.
Hibiscus (Hibiscus sabdariffa)	Flowers	Collect bracts just after petals fall and dry them; the tropical annual strain known as roselle provides the best zesty flavor.
Hops (Humulus lupulus)	Flowers	Slightly bitter tea is used to promote sleep; also used to flavor beer.
Hyssop (Hyssopus officinalis)	Leaves, flowers	Very flavorful bitter mint with showy blooms; easy to grow in large containers.
Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia)	Flowers	A few lavender flowers in tea enhance the aroma and promote relaxation.
Lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus)	Leaves	Fast-growing tropical grass can be grown in containers; leaves keep their pungent lemon flavor when dried.
Marshmallow (Althaea officinalis)	Leaves, roots	Persistent perennial in moist shade; teas soothe the digestive and urinary tracts, used as therapy for chronic bladder infections.
Nettles (Urtica dioica)	Leaves	First herb of spring, loaded with antioxidants; nettle tea is used as therapy for enlarged prostate gland.
Passionflower vine (Passiflora incarnata)	Leaves	Often combined with lemon balm and chamomile to reduce anxiety and restore calm.
Rhubarb (Rheum × hybridum)	Stems	Small pieces of dried rhubarb add a lemony zing to any herb tea.
Rose (Rosa rugosa)	Leaves, flowers, berries	Ripe berries, or rose hips, contain an abundance of vitamins and impart a citrusy flavor to teas; teas made from dried flower buds are used in Chinese medicine.
Sweet cicely (Myrrhis odorata)	Leaves, seedpods	A lovely soft-textured perennial for partial shade, sweet cicely leaves and green seedpods have a sweet, aniselike flavor.
Valerian (Valeriana officinalis)	Roots	One of the most potent herbs you can take to promote sleep, but its musky flavor must be masked by other herbs; also used to reduce anxiety in dogs.