The Cocktail Garden: What to Plant

Want an easy way to jazz up your cocktails throughout the summer and fall? Then head over to the garden for tasty herbs and flowers that can be used as edible garnishes or even muddled into your favorite tipple. Curious what to plant? Check out what's in the New Dawn Garden this year!

African Blue Basil

While all basils make tasty flowers, but African Blue Basil gives you a rich and pretty pink flower instead of the usual white. Fun fact, this is a sterile plant that just won’t quit as a result you get lots of flowers in addition to tasty leaves. These pretty flowers go beautifully with your champagne cocktails and leaves can be muddled into beverages or blended into our Bourbon Summer Fruit Smash.

Anise Hyssop

All my favorite herbs in one plant! Think if mint and the anise brand of licorice had a baby with a lemon. These pretty purple flowers make excellent garnishes for ice drinks in particular. Flowers can also be steeped in syrups or you can use them to gently infuse spirits. 

Attar of Rose Scented Geranium

Looking to add rose flavor and scents without the stress of roses? Enter the Attar of Rose Scented Geranium. The flower petals in particular are pretty as garnishes and the leaves can be used to infuse syrups or make your own rose scented extract. Also no need to stop at the rose scented variety all scented geraniums (except citronella) are edible and can be used in cocktails.

Bee Balm

Large spicy and colorful, bee balm has a flavor similar to citrusy Bergamont. Use the flowers as garnishes in drinks or float them in your punch bowl. The flowers  can even be fresh-frozen and will stay stunning for up to two months. The leaves can be muddled fresh or dried directly in your cocktail or steeped in syrups. But be careful, a little goes a long way!

Chomley Farran

Garnishing a cocktail or candying a flower? Go big or go home with Chomley Farran. A member of the carnation family with big beautiful pink and purple flowers this beauty is sure to take any cocktail over the top. Make sure to harvest flowers when the first open for maximum impact. 

Doesn’t everyone drink bourbon while gardening? For inspiration!

Lavender 

Lavender flowers have a rich sweet flavor that makes them at home in many a summer cocktail. Flowers can be muddled in your cocktails, used as garnishes, or steeped in syrups and infusions. As with most edible flowers, pick when they have just opened and before he turn brown. When eating, focus on the flower petals but pulling the flowers away from the little brown or lavender cap that holds them. Lavender flowers can also be fresh-frozen or dried to be used through colder months for a pop of summer. 

Mint

Essential for our mint julep, mint is probably the hardest working summer herb - infuse her in a syrup, muddle her in a drink, or use her fragrant leaves as a garnish. She also features in our Bourbon Summer Fruit Smash if you don’t have basil on hand, is a highlight in the Jasmine Bourbon Sipper, and is a garnish for the most recently featured Devereaux.

Pineapple Sage

Unlike regular sage, we’re after the long red tube-like flowers with a flavor akin to honeysuckle. Excellent as garnish or if you want to be extra fancy, candied, and then placed as garnish on your champagne and summer cocktails served up.

Rosemary

Here is another herb that can be found all over the cocktail menu well into fall and tipping into winter. Be sure to put up several ounces of rosemary infused syrup (you can freeze it) for those colder months when you’re reaching for a Rosemary Bourbon Cassis Martini. Rosemary can also be muddled directly into your drink like with the Rosemary Maple Bourbon Sour.Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.