How to Grow Mint at Home in the UK

Mint is one of the easiest and most rewarding herbs you can grow in the UK. It is tough, fast, and so generous that the only real skill is stopping it from taking over. A single plant in a pot will give you handfuls of fresh leaves from spring right through to the first frosts, for tea, salads, new potatoes and a proper homemade mojito.

If you are new to all this, mint belongs firmly on the list of easiest crops for beginners — it shrugs off neglect, comes back every year, and is almost impossible to kill. The catch, and there is only one, is that it wants to spread. Get that part right and the rest looks after itself.

Why grow mint

Mint earns its place for a simple reason: it gives a lot back for almost no effort. It is a hardy perennial, which means you plant it once and it returns year after year, dying back over winter and pushing up fresh shoots as soon as the soil warms in spring. There is no annual sowing, no fuss, and no fragile seedlings to coddle.

It is also genuinely vigorous. Where many herbs sulk in a cool British summer, mint romps away in sun or part shade and forgives the odd missed watering. The leaves are useful in the kitchen all season — chopped through new potatoes and peas, steeped for a fresh tea, muddled into drinks, or stirred into yoghurt and salads. Few plants are this easy to grow and this often used.

For a complete beginner, mint is a confidence-builder. Like basil, it gives a quick, fragrant result that makes growing feel achievable. Unlike basil, it is bone-hardy and asks almost nothing of you. If you have only ever bought herbs in plastic packets, one healthy mint plant will change how you cook.

The one rule: contain it

Here is the single thing you must know before you plant mint: never put it loose in a border or raised bed. Mint spreads by runners — horizontal underground stems that creep outwards just below the surface and send up new shoots wherever they reach. Left to its own devices, one small plant can colonise an entire bed in a single season and crowd out everything around it. Once those runners are threaded through your soil, digging them out is a long and thankless job, because any fragment left behind will resprout.

The fix is delightfully simple, and it is the same fix every experienced UK gardener uses: always grow mint in a container. You have two good options.

• In a pot. The cleanest approach. A pot on the patio, by the back door, or on a windowsill keeps the runners trapped where you can see them. This is how most people grow it, and our full guide to growing mint in pots walks through pot size, compost and watering.
• In a sunken bottomless container. If you really want mint in the ground, plant it inside a barrier. Sink an old bucket or large pot with the base cut out into the soil, leaving the rim 2–3cm proud of the surface so runners can't escape over the top. Fill with compost and plant into that. The roots are then boxed in.

Treat this as non-negotiable and mint becomes the most trouble-free plant in the garden. Ignore it, and you will be apologising to your borders for years.

Choosing a variety

"Mint" is really a whole family of plants, and the differences between them are worth knowing — some are for the teapot, some for the kitchen, and a couple are mainly for fun. Our guide to mint varieties goes into more depth, but these are the ones worth seeking out.

• Spearmint (Mentha spicata) — the classic culinary mint and the one to grow if you only grow one. Bright, clean flavour, perfect for mint sauce, new potatoes, peas and tea. This is the all-rounder.
• Peppermint (Mentha × piperita) — stronger, cooler and more menthol than spearmint, thanks to its higher menthol content. Best for tea and drinks rather than cooking.
• Moroccan mint — a fine-flavoured spearmint type, sweet and aromatic, traditionally used for sweet mint tea. A lovely choice for a teapot.
• Apple mint (Mentha suaveolens) — soft, slightly furry leaves with a gentler, fruitier flavour. Tough and reliable, and many people prefer it for mint sauce.
• Chocolate mint — a peppermint type with a faint cocoa note. More of a novelty than a kitchen workhorse, but children love it and it is a fun one to grow with kids.

Mint is almost always bought as a young plant rather than grown from seed, because named varieties don't come true from seed and an established plant gets you cropping straight away. You'll find pots of mint at any garden centre from spring onwards, or by post from the online retailers below.

Where to grow

Mint is refreshingly easy to please. It will grow in full sun or part shade — in fact a spot with a little afternoon shade often suits it better in a hot, dry summer, because mint likes its roots cool and moist.

The one thing it genuinely wants is moisture. Mint is happiest in soil or compost that stays reliably damp, which is why it does so well in pots that you can keep watered, and why a baking-hot, free-draining spot is the one place it struggles. A position by the back door, in part shade, with easy access to a watering can, is close to ideal — and it keeps the leaves handy for cooking.

Because it copes with shade and a pot, mint is a brilliant crop for small spaces and balconies. It sits comfortably alongside the rest of the windowsill growing repertoire, and if you are working entirely in containers, the principles in our guide to growing food in containers apply directly.

Planting and care

Plant pot-grown mint any time from spring to early autumn. If you bought it in a small nursery pot, move it into a container at least 25–30cm across filled with multipurpose compost — mint is hungry and a bigger pot means less frequent watering. Water it in well and stand it somewhere it won't dry out.

After that, care comes down to three habits:

1. Water well and often. This is the main job. Mint in a pot dries out faster than you'd think, especially in summer — check it most days in warm weather and don't let the compost go bone dry. Wilting mint usually just needs a drink.
2. Pinch out the tips. Regularly nipping out the growing tips, just above a pair of leaves, makes the plant branch and grow bushier rather than tall and bare-stemmed. Every harvest is a chance to do this, so the more you pick, the better it looks.
3. Cut it back hard mid-season. By midsummer mint often gets leggy, flowers, and the leaves coarsen. Don't be timid — shear the whole plant back to within a few centimetres of the compost. It will throw up a flush of fresh, tender new growth within a week or two, far nicer than the tired old stems.

A light feed with a general liquid fertiliser every few weeks through summer keeps a potted plant lush, though it is rarely essential.

A word on the flowers

Left unpinched, mint produces pretty spikes of pale lilac flowers in summer. Removing them keeps the plant putting its energy into leaves, which is what you want for the kitchen. But there is a genuine trade-off worth knowing: bees absolutely love mint flowers. A mint plant in bloom hums with pollinators on a warm day.

A nice compromise is to keep one plant pinched for cooking and let a second flower for the bees — mint is one of the easiest pollinator plants you can grow, and well worth a corner if you care about a wildlife-friendly garden.

Propagation

If there is one plant on which to learn propagation, it is mint — it roots so eagerly it almost does the work for you. Once you have a single plant, you can make as many more as you like for free, and they make excellent gifts. There are three easy methods.

• From runners. Tip the plant out of its pot in spring and you'll see pale, horizontal runners snaking through the compost. Cut off a length with a few roots and a shoot, pot it up, keep it moist, and it's away. This is the quickest method of all.
• From cuttings in water. Snip a 10cm non-flowering shoot, strip the lower leaves, and stand it in a glass of water on a windowsill. Within a couple of weeks it grows roots; pot it up once they're a few centimetres long. Children find this magical, and it's a lovely first project for getting kids growing.
• By division. Every few years, in spring or autumn, lift the whole plant, pull or chop the rootball into several chunks, and replant the healthiest pieces in fresh compost. This also rejuvenates an old, congested plant.

Honestly, you can be quite rough with mint. It is so determined to grow that even careless cuttings usually take.

Harvesting and using

Start picking as soon as the plant is established and growing strongly, usually from late spring. Harvest by pinching or snipping whole sprigs from the top, just above a pair of leaves — this both gives you the freshest growth and encourages the plant to bush out. The more you pick, the more it produces, so don't be shy.

Young leaves have the best flavour, which is another reason to cut back hard mid-season and crop the tender regrowth. Always use mint fresh where you can — it's at its most fragrant straight off the plant. Chop it through new potatoes and peas, steep a few sprigs for tea, stir it into yoghurt, or use it in mint sauce with a little vinegar and sugar.

Mint also dries and freezes well for the winter months when the plant has died back. Freezing chopped leaves in ice-cube trays with a little water is the simplest method and keeps the flavour better than drying. For the full range of methods, see our guide to drying and storing herbs.

Overwintering

Mint is fully hardy across the UK, so winter holds no fear for it. As the days shorten and the cold arrives, the top growth yellows and dies right back — this is completely normal and not a sign that you've lost the plant. The roots simply sit dormant in the pot, and fresh shoots push up again as the soil warms in spring.

There is very little to do. Move pots into a sheltered spot if you like, cut away the dead top growth once it has collapsed, and ease off the watering — dormant mint needs only enough moisture to stop the compost drying out entirely. A plant in the ground (in its sunken container) needs nothing at all.

If you want a few leaves over winter, pot up a division in autumn and keep it on a bright kitchen windowsill, where the warmth keeps it ticking over. Otherwise, just be patient: spring mint is always worth the wait.

Problems

Mint is remarkably trouble-free, but two fungal diseases are worth recognising. Both are more likely on tired, congested, overcrowded plants — which is one more reason to cut back hard and divide regularly.

• Mint rust. The most common problem. You'll see bright orange, dusty pustules on the undersides of the leaves and distorted, pale shoots in spring. It is a fungal disease and can persist in the plant. The standard advice is to cut all affected growth right down and dispose of it (don't compost it), and in a bad case it's best to discard the plant entirely and start fresh with clean stock in a new spot. Good airflow and not overcrowding pots are the main preventions.
• Powdery mildew. A white, dusty coating on the leaves, usually in late summer and most common on plants that have been allowed to dry out at the roots. The fix is to keep mint consistently moist, improve air circulation by thinning crowded growth, and cut back hard to trigger clean new leaves.

Beyond those, slugs may nibble fresh spring shoots, but established mint easily outgrows the damage. There is genuinely not much that troubles this plant — which, along with its endless generosity, is exactly why it belongs in every beginner's garden. Plant it, contain it, and pick it often.

For more on getting started with herbs and the wider herb collection, mint is the perfect plant to learn on — and once you have it going, you'll wonder how you ever managed without a fresh sprig to hand.