Mint Varieties: Which to Grow

When most people say "mint", they picture a single plant. In fact there are dozens of mints grown in UK gardens, and they taste surprisingly different — from the clean, sweet leaf you want in a mint sauce to a sharp, throat-tingling menthol that belongs in a chocolate pudding. Pick the wrong one and your "mint tea" can end up tasting like toothpaste.

The good news is that mint is one of the easiest crops for a beginner to grow, and every variety below is just as forgiving. This guide walks through the mints worth growing in Britain, what each one tastes like, and the jobs it does best — so you can choose with confidence. For everything on planting, feeding and harvesting, see the main mint guide.

Spearmint — the kitchen classic

Spearmint (Mentha spicata) is the mint most British recipes mean when they just say "mint". The leaves are bright green, slightly crinkled, and the flavour is clean and sweet with very little of the cooling menthol bite you get from peppermint. That gentleness is exactly why it works so well in cooking — it lifts a dish without taking it over.

This is the mint for a proper mint sauce with the Sunday roast lamb, for tossing with buttered new potatoes, for chopping through a tabbouleh or a summer salad, and for stirring into peas or a yoghurt raita. It is the safe, useful all-rounder, and if you only have room for one mint, this is the one to plant.

Spearmint is fully hardy in the UK. It dies back over winter and bursts up again from the roots in spring, which makes it a reliable perennial that returns year after year with no fuss. The classic garden form sold simply as "spearmint" or "garden mint" is hard to beat, and it is widely available as a young plant in spring.

Peppermint — strong and cooling

Peppermint (Mentha × piperita) is a natural cross between spearmint and watermint, and it is a much bolder plant. The leaves are often darker, sometimes tinged purple at the stem, and the flavour is intense — full of cooling menthol that catches the back of your throat. It is the mint behind peppermint tea, after-dinner mints and a great deal of confectionery.

That strength is a feature, not a fault, as long as you use it in the right place. Peppermint shines in drinks and puddings: a few leaves muddled into a long iced drink, a sprig in hot chocolate, chopped through a chocolate mousse, or steeped on its own for a settling after-dinner tea. It can overpower a savoury dish, so it is not the one to reach for when a recipe calls for "fresh mint".

Like spearmint, peppermint is fully hardy and comes back each spring. One quirk worth knowing: peppermint is a sterile hybrid, so it rarely sets viable seed. Any peppermint sold as seed is usually disappointing — buy a named plant, then it is easy to keep going from cuttings or by dividing the roots.

Moroccan mint — the tea mint

If you want to grow one mint purely for a glass of tea, make it Moroccan mint (a particularly fine form of Mentha spicata). It has the clean spearmint family flavour but turned up — sweeter, more aromatic and beautifully fragrant, with none of the harsh menthol edge of peppermint.

This is the mint traditionally used in North African mint tea, brewed strong with green tea and plenty of sugar, and it makes a wonderful pot of fresh mint tea on its own. It is also the best choice for a mojito or a jug of homemade mint cordial, where you want a sweet, refreshing flavour rather than a cooling one. In the kitchen it stands in happily for ordinary spearmint too.

Moroccan mint is hardy in the UK and grows just as easily as garden mint. Because it is so good in a glass, it is a brilliant crop to grow on a sunny windowsill where you can pinch a sprig whenever you fancy a brew.

Apple and pineapple mint — mild and fruity

Not all mints are sharp. Apple mint (Mentha suaveolens) has soft, rounded, slightly furry pale-green leaves and a gentle flavour with a faint fruity sweetness behind the mint. It is milder than spearmint and very pleasant chopped into fruit salads, summer drinks, jellies and puddings — and many people actually prefer it for a classic mint sauce because it is so mellow.

Pineapple mint is a pretty variegated form of apple mint, with leaves splashed cream and white. The fruity note is a little more pronounced, and the foliage is decorative enough to earn its place at the front of a border or in a pot by the back door. Both are tough, hardy plants that cope well in the typical British garden.

The soft, downy leaves of these fruity mints are best used fresh, as they do not dry quite as neatly as the smoother-leaved mints. If you do want a winter store, the cleaner spearmint and peppermint leaves are easier to handle — there is more on this in our guide to drying and storing herbs.

Chocolate mint and other novelties

Chocolate mint is a form of peppermint with dark stems and a genuine whiff of after-dinner mint chocolate about it — the cooling menthol with a faint cocoa warmth behind it. It is a lovely thing to grow with children, who are usually delighted that a plant can smell like a chocolate. Use it as you would peppermint: in puddings, hot chocolate and minty desserts.

Beyond that, there is a whole world of scented mints to collect once you are hooked. Ginger mint has narrow gold-flecked leaves and a warm, faintly spicy note; basil mint carries a hint of basil; and there are lemon and orange scented mints too. None of these is essential, but they are cheap, easy and good fun, and they all make excellent pollinator plants — bees adore the late-summer mint flowers.

Which to grow for what — a quick chooser

If you are still deciding, here is the short version:

For most UK kitchens, a pot of spearmint plus a pot of Moroccan mint covers nearly everything you will cook and brew. Add peppermint if you are a keen tea drinker, and treat the fruity and chocolate mints as enjoyable extras.

When you are ready to buy, named mint plants are far more reliable than seed (remember peppermint barely sets seed at all). Most garden centres carry a few in spring, and the range below is sold as healthy young plants by post.

Keep different mints in separate pots

One last, important point. Whatever mints you choose, grow each one in its own container rather than together in a bed or a single big pot. There are two reasons for this.

First, mint spreads aggressively by underground runners and will quickly swamp anything planted beside it — including other mints. Put two varieties in one pot and within a season the more vigorous one usually crowds the other out, and you lose the variety you wanted to keep. Separate pots keep each plant honest and easy to harvest.

Second, growing mint in pots is simply the best way to control it. Loose in the ground it can run right across a border, but a pot keeps the roots contained while the plant still crops generously. Our full guide to growing mint in pots covers the right size of container, the compost to use and how to keep it lush — and it is the same approach whether you are growing one mint or a whole windowsill collection of them.

Whichever you start with, you can have a second variety within weeks: snip a healthy shoot, pop it in a glass of water on the windowsill, and it will usually root in a fortnight. From there you are only ever a cutting away from a whole shelf of different mints. For everything else — planting, feeding, harvesting and stopping it taking over — head back to the main mint guide.