Growing your Own Drinks

If you like these recipes, you might want to consider creating your own cocktail garden. Whereas wines usually require large quantities of single foods, most of these recipes feature mere pinches of ingredients, many of which can be grown at home. Base your growing scheme around a few of the key ingredients mentioned elsewhere in the book – such as herbs including mint, fennel, thyme and wormwood (pictured). Add a bit of colour with a few flowers – lavender, borage or perhaps a rose. You could even include a few vegetables – if your patch gets a bit of sunshine, chillies and cucumbers are worth growing for their respective heat-giving and cooling properties. Then try adding some more unusual plants to get creative – and here are three suggestions that might inspire. The herb lemon verbena, as its name suggests, has a lemony flavour – making it a useful option for infusions and cocktails. Anise hyssop is a member of the mint family but has a sweet, anise flavour – an interesting substitute for the familiar mint garnish. Alpine strawberries are plants that will happily grow in among other plants, and their tiny, deep-red fruits can pep up a punch. But they’re just our suggestions… now it’s your turn to get creative!