Chrysanthemum Tea: From Garden to Tea Cup | Health Benefits + Growing & Drying flowers for tea

Chrysanthemums are beautiful. In autumn, they are especially exuberant and heaping with flowers. But they’re not only aesthetically pleasing in the garden, they also make healthy herbal beverage.

These flowers are popular in Chinese medicine - a way to cool down the body especially in hot summer days. No wonder I see a lot of tetra packaged chrysanthemum teas in Oriental groceries.

I did not mean to plant and harvest the chrysanthemums for tea. Back in the spring, I started a new garden in the backyard. I wanted some perennials so that I know they’d be flowers that will (hopefully) come back year after year. Something to plant under the roses. The chrysanthemums were sold in a hardware store plant section, in 2.5 inches pots and marked “perennial”. So I grabbed a few pots

It took me two weeks to plant them outdoors from the time I brought them home from the garden Center; and the chrysanthemums took their sweet time growing. It wasn’t until end of summer that buds started to show. That’s okay, the roses were growing nicely and were stars of the show. When the roses begin to fade, the chrysanthemums planted underneath started to burst in blooms. They are lovely!

One day, I happened to have the uncomfortable cold sore. In scouring the internet, I came across the benefits of Chrysanthemums. Goodness! What cultivar do i have? I ran to the backyard to check on the label. Blessings indeed, it is the exact cultivar used for teas. Time to bring that body temperature down, I harvested plenty of flowers for tea. Memories of my first experience of this tea made me nostalgic.

Use the flowers with some tea (green, oolong, black); add some dried roses too! Sweeten with your favourite sweetener if you wish but these flower tea taste good without them. If you wish for a little sweetness, add some goji berries. Yum! Yum!

Here is my experience on fresh chrysanthemums in tea as well as dried. I hope you enjoy this video.

More delightful gardening life videos:

   • Delightful Gardening Life  

More garden 101 (tutorials of sorts):

   • I tried… 😄  

Roses in a beginner’s garden:

   • A Romance with ROSES  

~*~

"A garden is a grand teacher;
it teaches patience and careful watchfulness;
it teaches integrity and thrift;
above all, it teaches entire trust."
~ Gertrude Jekyll

Welcome to Delightful Souvenirs from the Garden, a collection of gardening moments and experiences. Thank you for coming to learn and garden with me. I hope you enjoy yourself. My name is Maiah, an amateur gardener. My little garden is located in the North (New Brunswick Canada). Our summers are very short (100-110 days a year) and the temperatures can go down to minus 20 (even -30) degrees Celsius in the winter. The fleeting time makes every moment in the garden special. This vlog is meant to collect those delightful moments in the garden as keepsakes and remembrances of lessons learned.

Thank you for gardening with me, I hope you enjoy yourself.
Happy gardening!

Maiah
#chinesetea #garden #chrysanthemum #asmr