Shake Things Up For Spring With This Popular Gardening Trend

After a long winter, nothing can beat a cocktail and good company by the firepit on a cool evening. Whether you're a beginner mixologist or do it for a living, creating your own drinks at home is fun and delicious. You can further impress your guests by having a cocktail garden ready for fun nights with friends. A cocktail garden is a small garden used to grow ingredients like mint, peppers, or strawberries. You don't need an entire yard to make it happen, and just one plant could be enough for you and your friends to enjoy cocktails over the weekend.

You don't need a whole lot to get a cocktail garden going. If you have room for container gardening, you'll have room for this. Most plants can thrive on a windowsill or under a grow light, leaving you with some growing flexibility and the possibility of growing cocktail ingredients indoors all year long.

A well-made cocktail will have carefully planned ingredients and be shaken or stirred rather than just poured into a cup and served. It doesn't get more thoughtful than using homegrown ingredients, and you can take your drink-mixing craft to the next level by using fresh garnishes.

Cocktail gardens can be as simple as growing countertop plants that don't take up much space. Mint, basil, and thyme are easy to grow as container plants and are delicious in various cocktails such as mojitos, sours, mint juleps, and gin fizzes. If you want something more involved, jalapeños, strawberries, and rhubarb are tasty ingredients that require a bit more care but can still be grown in containers. If you love zesty, fruity drinks, get larger containers and grow citrus trees like lemons, limes, or oranges. All of these plants can be grown indoors with grow lights or outdoors on the patio and overwintered indoors.

You can start a cocktail garden wherever you have space, water, soil, and sunlight. Containers or raised beds on a patio would work well so you can enjoy your plants while you sip the beverages you made with them. Small containers on a stylish outdoor bar cart or patio dining area would be convenient and cute. You can also opt for indoor plants. Pick the sunniest room or supplement with grow lights.

Mint is a great first plant since it can be used for many classic drinks like the mint julep and mojito. Thanks to its rapidly spreading growth habit, a container will be the best place to plant mint. It thrives in a sunny location but can tolerate some shade and can survive in temperatures down to -20 degrees Fahrenheit. Keep the plant well-watered for the best results. Harvest the plant early and often for delicious minty flavors in all your drinks.

Basil is another great herb that will flavor your drinks nicely while giving you very few growing problems. Basil is a lot like mint in that it likes moist soil and plenty of sunshine. Continual harvesting will encourage the plant to grow bushier, giving you plenty of basil to mix into or garnish drinks like a basil lime cooler or a pomelo and basil cocktail.