Bartenders Are Growing Their Own Garnish Gardens — Here’s How You Can Too

Something is taking root in mixology. Bartenders are increasingly growing their own cocktail additions and foraging for inspiration and ingredients. 

The slow food movement has reached the cocktail space, as drinkers have become interested in more complex herbal, floral, bitter, earthy, and spicy flavors. Many bartenders are questioning the sustainability of garnishes, and those who are more eco-conscious are growing their own. 

It’s a golden era for celebrating plants in cocktails. And it opens a new field of possibilities for the home bartender. 

Want to explore more complex flavor profiles in your drinks? Or become hands-on about the ingredients you use? There’s never been a better time to start your own mixology garden.

Planting the cocktail seeds: what to grow

“The best place to start for the home bartender is mint,” says Pat Ivain, co-lead bartender at Restaurant Matilda at The Henson in Hensonville, New York. “Either muddled, in a syrup, or as a garnish, mint is incredibly versatile, and it’s very challenging to find nice mint in most grocery stores, at least in the quantities I require for my rampant Mojito consumption.”

Mint comes in many varieties, all of which explode with evocative aromas, which makes it appealing to both professional and home bartenders. They all grow well, either in containers or gardens, with full or partial sun, consistent watering, and well-draining soil.

“Mint goes into dozens of cocktails,” says Nihat Çam, director of bars at The Tampa Edition hotel. “Basil, too…you want something that smells nice and brings freshness [to drinks], and mint and basil give you those elements, plus they’re easy to take care of.”

Lavender is a gorgeous cocktail addition. It grows well both in containers and in the ground, if it gets a lot of sunlight and has well-draining soil. Ditto that for minty, licorice-y anise hyssop. Dill is easy to grow in containers or gardens with ample sun and moisture, but it may require a touch more creativity for use. It’s excellent in savory drinks from Bloody Marys to Dirty Martinis. 

For Bentley Gillman, head distiller at Tattersall Distilling in River Falls, Wisconsin, his love of plants and use of them in drinks led him to write Cocktails in Bloom, A Tattersall Foraged Cocktail Book. 

“As far as a cocktail garden goes, mint, rosemary, thyme, and sage are great places to start,” says Gillman. “You can just start using them as an interesting garnish, and then you [can] get into making cool infusions or syrups.” 

These herbs, Gillman says, don’t require much space. Even someone with a couple of small pots on a compact apartment patio can grow them. Strawberries, he says, are easy to grow vertically in a pot and make for delicious spritzes and smashes.

Gillman’s book focuses on foraging, but he’s also grown his own ingredients. He encourages home bartenders and gardeners to pay attention to the other things that grow among their plants. 

“If you prepare an area for growing vegetables or fruits or herbs, the earth starts to provide whatever it thinks the soil needs at that time,” says Gillman. “Instead of combating [weeds], look at what those weeds are telling you…because they wouldn’t be growing there if there wasn’t some necessity. A lot of things we consider weeds have cool medicinal and flavor components.” 

For example, fresh dandelion flowers and their young leaves make bright, earthy infusions, while their roots have a bitterness great for cocktails. Wood sorrel has a lemony, sour-sweet flavor. Nettles offer an almost umami character, and amaranth is fresh and vegetal.

Amy Stewart, author of several books on plants, including The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create the World’s Great Drinks, also advocates for strawberries. She recommends everbearing varieties like Seascape, Albion, and Eversweet. Stewart says to consider growing things that you can’t readily grab at the supermarket, or even your local farm’s market.

“Scented geranium, for example, is edible and known for its culinary uses, but you’re not going to find it at the grocery store,” says Stewart. “That makes it more worth the effort of growing it yourself. There’s a huge variety of scents, meaning flavors, from rose to pineapple to peppermint, and they’re all fantastic in gin and vodka cocktails as well as in simple syrups.” 

Garden to glass: how to use your home-grown ingredients

The list of cocktails where you can incorporate garden botanicals is endless. 

Mint, rosemary, basil, sage, thyme, and geranium are all aromatic garnishes that will elevate simpler drinks like Gin & Tonics, spritzes, Champagne cocktails, and Daiquiris. Muddling them will extend their aromas through every sip, and any berries you grow can prove an instant smash, literally.

Stewart proposes to infuse simple syrups with your harvested goods. This will help them last more than a few days. Simply heat equal parts sugar and water until the sugar is dissolved, add berries, citrus peels, or herbs, and strain out any solids before refrigerating.

You can make an oleo saccharum syrup by muddling the pithless peels of citrus fruits with sugar and herbs. After a few rounds of muddling and about an hour, you’ll have an oil that bursts with those botanical aromas. Or, infuse your plants right into a spirit like vodka or gin by letting clean, trimmed herbs steep in the liquor from a few days to a few weeks. 

Another good way to make herbs last is to dry them. Dried herbs make striking garnishes and are just as ready to pop into syrups, oleos, and infusions.

“Drying couldn’t be simpler,” says Gillman. “You can [hang herbs] on trees in the shade where they’ll get air or dry them in the kitchen hung from hooks or clipped with clothespins to hangers.”

For cocktail ideas, pay attention if you’re sipping an herbaceous drink at a bar or restaurant with its own garden. At Earth at Hidden Pond in Kennebunkport, Maine, bar supervisor Danielle Ruane says they grow lemon balm, several varieties of mint, lavender, basil, sage, thyme, marigold, and cilantro. 

“Basil pairs well with many spirits,” she says. “You can use it in syrups, fresh, in shrubs, and in infused liquor.” Ruane recommends adding basil to lemonade for a delicious, nonalcoholic option. Earth has a signature cocktail with dried lavender-infused gin, and it also uses lavender as a garnish and in syrups. Ruane says it’s popular in the Bee’s Knees.

Tips for nurturing and enjoying your plants

Whether you focus on mint varieties and simple garnishes or seek to grow more complex botanicals for syrups and infusions, cultivating your own cocktail ingredients can expand the way that you think about flavors and the assorted combinations available. 

Many herbs are easy to grow in containers, raised beds, or the ground. Choose plants depending on your climate, flavor preferences, and the cocktails that you like to drink. Stewart recommends consulting the staff at a gardening center, nursery, or farmers market. These experts can introduce you to varieties that you never knew existed. 

“They know better than the internet,” she says. “They’re used to the climate. They can say, ‘This won’t work in this climate, try this,’ or, ‘Don’t waste your time on the internet.’” 

Even if you set out to grow one or two herbs for one or two cocktails, the results of your harvest promise to make you think of fresh drink ideas.