Five herbs to grow that you won’t find in shops
Forget parsley and mint, try growing bergamot and sweet cicely to perk up your dishes, says Hannah Stephenson
There are so many easy-to-grow herbs which are overlooked, says award-winning herb expert Jekka Mcvicar, who runs Jekka’s Herb Farm in South Gloucestershire and is a 14-times RHS Chelsea Gold Medal winner for her organic, peat-free herb exhibits.
Many of these are detailed in her latest book, 100 Herbs To Grow. Here, she suggests five herbs which gardeners who want to be slightly more adventurous might grow.
Hyssop
“This is an absolute must-have. It’s stunningly beautiful when in flower and the bees adore it,” she says.
The flowers of this hardy perennial are generally blue and purple, but there’s also a pink variety, and a white one too. Flowers are edible and have a slightly minty flavour, or you can make a tea with the leaves, with a generous teaspoon of honey. “The leaf makes a fantastic salad dressing and will grow in exactly the same place as your sage and thyme. It goes really well with tomatoes in a pasta sauce,” says Mcvicar. “It just adds a slightly different flavour to a dish.”
Grow it in a sunny spot in a well-drained, neutral-toalkaline soil. You may need to add grit as hyssop will die if sodden. It’s a great neighbour for cabbages as it lures away the cabbage white butterfly.
Myrtle
Mcvicar uses the aromatic dark leaves of this fragrant evergreen shrub in her cooking as you would use bay, adding them to stews, soups and sauces, before removing and discarding them. “The white flowers are stunning. They are followed by black berries, which you can make myrtle gin from, as we would make sloe gin,” she says.
Plant it in full sun in a welldrained soil. Too much wet will kill it, as will cold winds, so plant it against a south or westfacing wall and don’t overfeed. Protect it from frost and wet weather in winter, making sure that your container is lifted on to bricks if it’s in a pot.
Wild bergamot
Otherwise known as Monarda fistulosa, this has a mauve leaf and the flowers look like a lady’s fancy summer wedding hat, Mcvicar reckons. “I use the petals of that flower in salads. It’s glorious. They have a warm, minty, spicy flavour.”
Native to North America, this perennial plant has spreading rhizome roots which grow to 1m (3ft) tall and the leaves can be used to make a spicy tea.
“It’s very easy to grow in a well-drained soil,” she says. “They are glorious in flower and you could easily grow it as an ornamental. It’s known as bee balm because it’s good for bees and other pollinators. You also get the seedheads which finches adore in the autumn.” Grow it in well-drained soil in a sunny spot and dig up plants over three years old, removing the dead centre and replanting in a prepared site.
Lemon grass
“In the UK you can only buy the stem but if you go abroad, everyone uses the leaf,” she says. “It’s a proper grass, like the goose grass that you used to whistle through as a child.” You can grow lemon grass (Cymbopogon citratus) from seed, sowing indoors in spring in prepared seed trays or modules on a frost-free windowsill. Often used to add fragrance to Thai curries and other South East Asian dishes, it’s best kept indoors in winter and put outside in summer when the night temperature doesn’t fall below 8C. Pick the leaves when they are young.
“You can make tea with the leaf," Mcvicar says. “Just chop it into small pieces and add boiled – not boiling – water and it is so refreshing. Or you can have it cold in summer, and make ice cubes with the tea, which go really well in a gin and tonic.”
Use it as a container plant, using a loam-based compost, and don’t let it dry out in summer. In the autumn bring it indoors into a frost-free environment.
Sweet cicely
This native herbaceous perennial is our natural sugar herb, Mcvicar explains. Sweet cicely (Myrrhis odorata) leaves start pushing through now, at the same time rhubarb is ready, she says. “Add those leaves to the rhubarb, when you’re cooking it, and you can cut down sugar by three quarters. When you crush the leaf it has a sweet aniseed flavour.”
The leaves can be chopped and used in salads, or added to soups, while the roots can be cooked as a vegetable and served with butter, or eaten raw, grated and used in French dressing. The plant can be invasive so choose carefully where you plant it.
I use the petals of wild bergamot in
salads.
It’s glorious
100 Herbs To Grow by Jekka Mcvicar is out now from Hardie Grant, priced £30.