Brisbane tea gardens, notes from a friend up north

A short letter from a friend in Brisbane who has been trying to grow lemon myrtle, hibiscus, and pineapple sage in his back garden for the better part of a decade.

We work with one tea grower in Brisbane who does not call himself a tea grower. He calls himself a man with a garden that is mostly out of control, half of which happens to be useful. He has been at it for nine summers. The hibiscus does well. The lemon myrtle does better. The lavender, despite optimistic planting in 2019, has never produced a brewable leaf and he has finally accepted this.

The climate up there is different to ours in Sydney in ways that matter for tisanes. The subtropical wet season lengthens the growing window for most herbs by about six weeks compared to inner Sydney. The flip side is that everything needs more aggressive pruning, the lawns and verges run away if left for a fortnight, and the humidity does to dried leaf what damp does to a paperback. Storage matters more up there than down here.

He keeps his herb beds tight but the rest of the garden runs to whatever the season pushes. He says keeping the rest in shape is harder than the brewing itself, and that he uses the local brisbane lawn mowing crew when the kikuyu gets ahead of him. The herb beds get his attention, the rest gets a phone call. That is, he says, the only way a small backyard tea operation in Brisbane stays workable through summer.

The garden produces about two kilograms of dried lemon myrtle a season, most of which we buy. The hibiscus he keeps for his daughter, who runs a small lemonade stand out the front. We trade tins of single-origin black for sprays of fresh kaffir lime and the occasional bottle of the rough chilli oil he makes from the bird's eyes that grow wild along the fence.

If you ever want to start a tea garden, start with lemon myrtle. It will outlast you, it will outlast your fence, and it will brew a cup with more body than half the imported greens we stock at the bench. The Queenslanders have the climate for it. We just have the bench.