There are some garden herbs that are safe to use, easy to grow, and which have the reputation for calming nerves, and inducing restful sleep. Chamomile, Lemon Balm and Lavender are just three of them and can be grown in your garden or balcony to give you what it takes to make a gentle but effective anti-anxiety tea all through the year. These plants can be used straight from the garden, or can be dried for later use; lay them in trays in an airing cupboard, or hang inside in small bunches until completely dry. Store in an airtight container out of direct sunlight.
 
Chamomile

The chamomile to use is German Chamomile [Matricaria recutita]. To avoid confusion about species of chamomile, buy a seed packet or obtain plants from a nursery to get the right one. If you want to gather from the wild take a good flower key or you may end up with stinking mayweed.

Seeds can be sown from early spring, and they will flower from early summer into autumn, or you can buy a plant from a garden centre for your harvest, and it flowers come back every year, and spread. When you sow seed next spring, sow thickly in a sunny position. Gather the flowerheads not the leaves, and as you cut them more will be produced.

Chamomile is a pleasant tasting herb which you either love or loathe. In Germany a traditional use was to give nervous people a cup of chamomile tea to drink as it has a very gentle sedative effect on an anxious mind, and like Lemon Balm it also calms the digestive system.

Lemon Balm

Lemon Balm [Melissa officinalis] is a Mediterranean plant, and so will thrive in a poor soil as long as it has enough sunlight, though it can tolerate some shade. Unless you have a big garden, Lemon Balm is best kept in pots as it will to take over the whole plot. Buy one plant rather than seeds as you don’t need too many. Lemon Balm can be bought as an established plants from garden centres. Only harvest the leaves, which are at their best before the plant flowers.

Lemon Balm has a beautiful scent and is best used fresh. It is antispasmodic which helps calm digestive colic cause by stress. It is a nervine which helps calm anxiety and anxious palpitations, and soothes tension headaches.

Lavender

No English garden would be really complete without Lavender. This aromatic plant thrives in our climate; but even though it can tolerate our damp conditions it does love the sun. If it is planted in sunny areas then it will be able to produce more of the medicinal oils in its flowers. You can grow Lavender from seed, but you will have to wait a while for any flowers; much quicker to pick up an established plant from a garden centre or online.

Lavender has an intense flavour and fragrance, and you don’t need many flower heads in each cup. Lavender contains medicinal volatile oils, as do Chamomile and Lemon Balm. Research shows that it is indeed a ‘mood stabiliser’ and can improve sleep quality for some people suffering from insomnia, nervous palpitations and all disorders arising from anxiety. Lavender has been used for thousands of years for all types of nervous and anxiety-based problems. In particular, it has been shown to decrease the innervation of the adrenal glands, thereby reducing the stress response.

Breathing in the steam when drinking these aromatic herbs is important as inhaling oils released in hot drinks is the fastest route into the body for the medicinal actions they convey. When these vapours are breathed in, the molecules are absorbed by the nasal membranes receptors, which send a signal to the limbic system. The limbic system deals with emotion and the feelings that are associated with memories, and the management of our emotional reactions to situations. Indeed, they are all classed as being thymoleptic, which means that they can ‘lift the spirits’.