Garden mint plants

Mentha spicata

Spearmint is the most frequently found garden herb whuich may be why it is also known as Common or Garden mint. As well as its traditional use with lamb, it is now included in in feta and fruit salads, used to garnish drinks and added to jellies or salsas making it an indispensable component of any herb garden. The familiar bright green leaves are pointed with serrated edges. Slightly smaller than apple mint, spearmint sports similar but slightly deeper purple flowers in the summer and is just as rampant. It dies right back in the winter. One of the essentials from our range of UK grown herbs for sale

A herb garden essential

The bright and refreshing taste of mint is hard to beat for its refreshing flavour. You are best to grow it in a large pot or, even better, to sink a bottomless bucket into the ground (leaving a 5 cm rim above ground) into which you plant it because otherwise it has a tendency to send runners out in every direction and colonise your entire herb area. The leaves taste better before flowering so pick frequently and clip if you don't need any for a few days. Strangely if you plant one type of mint next to another, they lose their individual scent and flavour so grow your fancy mint plants separately to keep them distinctive. Aesthetically pleasing in itself, you could try interspersing it with more low lying herbs like the thymes Silver and Golden Queen. More practically, spearmint deters aphids from attacking your roses, so grow some in and around your rose garden too. It will almost act like a mulching ground cover and will protect your roses at the same time.

Spearmint Features

• Height: 45- 60 cm
• Spread: indefinite unless contained
• Colour: bright green, pointed, serrated edge, mauve/purple flowers
• Flowers: July-August
• Uses: culinary, herb garden - good for cooking and tea
• Spacing: 30 cm
• Scent: spearmint
• Habit: upright, vigorous
• Life: hardy perennial

Mint myths

MInt was such an important herb to the Egyptians that it was placed in the tombs of the dead as long ago as 2,500 BC.