Tea Blog

One of the drawbacks of living in a top floor flat is that a kitchen garden is at best precarious and at worst hazardous. There’s really only so much you can do with a window box and a hanging basket. You could maybe encourage some beans to climb up the drain pipe to your window, but to be honest between the gale force winds and the frequently alarming size of the hailstones, outdoor window gardening isn’t always a practical solution in Scotland.

Still I’m not going to let that deny me the joys of a tea garden, I just have to make the best of what I can grow indoors.

Mint is always the most obvious choice for me. Not only does it make a delicious, healthy and refreshing infusion, but it’s an incredibly forgiving plant. As a woman who has successfully neglected to death more than one cactus, this is an extremely important requirement. It’s also a fast grower, which is good for many reasons. Obviously, more leaves means more “tea” but the plant’s ability to take over half of the sink in a week makes it much less easy to forget about.

My other options are somewhat limited by my husband’s hayfever. Growing chamomile indoors specifically for it’s flowers seems a bit cruel! Instead, I’ve gone for another nigh on indestructible plant: rosemary. Rosemary “tea” was introduced to me six years ago by a crazy, nocturnal Belgian woman I was living with at the time. It’s a great evening drink, herbal and aromatic and tasting exactly how you’d expect it to.

So, that’s two plants it’ll probably take me a while to kill. I have space for three more.

My next purchase absolutely has to be lemon balm which makes a delicious citrus infusion and is a close enough relative to mint that I probably can’t kill it straight away. Another good choice could be lavender, provided I don’t let it flower. It doesn’t make the best infusion on it’s own but it’s a nice addition to other teas and herbal mixes.

So that leaves me with one more space to fill, and the chances of finding a mature, bonsai Camellia sinensis probably aren’t great! Any suggestions for robust, forgiving plants for my ‘garden’ would be greatly appreciated.

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