Garden Walk Herb Tea Blends, various recipes

For Summer I thought I would feature the two herb flavored teas I make for the summer garden walk season: Elmhurst Garden Walk Tea and Garden Gait Black Tea.

The first is an all herb tea called Elmhurst Garden Walk Tea. This tea was crafted for use at my booth at the Elmhurst Garden Walk and Faire when I started displaying my herbs there back in 2000. I brew the tea and serve it as an iced tea almost every year. I chose the herbs because they were a blend of flowers to keep with the theme of garden walk along with my favorite herb lemon verbena. The lemon gives it a tart flavor that is perfect for summer refreshment. I only make this tea in the summer when lemon verbena is at its peak. The blend contains lemon verbena, rose hips, lavender, chamomile, and calendula. It is best as a brewed iced tea, but you can make it as a sun tea. I enjoy it in the morning and on hot afternoons after gardening.

The second is a special blend I created with the assistance of the Lisle Women’s Club, called Garden Gait Herbed Black Tea. For the Women's Club I did my program “Curative Properties of Tea” and as part of the program we chose herbs to sample with the intent that we would prepare this blend with black tea for use at the garden walk they call “Garden Gait.” The first time I made this blend was back in 2010 and it was a big hit, so I still make it today. As part of the original arrangement a portion of the proceeds from this blend both then and now are donated to the Lisle Women’s Club for their scholarship fund. The blend contains black tea, lavender, hibiscus, lemon verbena and blackberry leaf. It makes a great iced tea as well as a sipping warm tea and is a perfect companion to scones and can be used to make tea bread.

Both of these blends can be purchased loose with a ½ cup in a zip seal bag or tin or as a Sun Tea. The sun tea is sold with 2 over sized tea bags in a package each making about 1 gallon of sun tea.