Drinking herbal tea is fast becoming a healthful alternative to coffee. Just look in the supermarket aisle and you can see how many herbal teas are for sale.

Herbal teas are much more popular in Europe and North Africa than they are here. I remember watching French and Swiss bartenders making little pots of chamomile tea, an infusion, for groups of ladies who wanted something soothing.

I wondered what the men and women of Casablanca were going to do with the large bouquets of fresh mint they seemed always to be carrying until I ordered te a la menthe. I was served a little tin pot of steaming liquid stuffed with fresh mint leaves and amply laced with sugar. Delicious!

As gardeners, we have the opportunity to grow a lot of our favorite herbal teas right in our own backyard. All of the herbs used for making herbal tea are easy to grow, most are perennials and you can use the leaves either fresh or dried.

Besides being tasty and refreshing, herbal tea plants can also be quite attractive and when they are in flower they become a magnet for bees.

Here's a list of some herbal teas you can grow yourself:

Mint -- (Mentha) There must be about a dozen different types of mint you can grow from apple to chocolate to grapefruit mint. Don't forget good old fashioned spearmint and peppermint. Each makes great tea individually or as a blend.

On the whole, I find that peppermint makes the best tea. It has a naturally sweet flavor and is not bitter the way some of the other teas can be.

Buy as many pots of mint as you like but do not plant them in the soil. Mint will spread and take over your garden. Instead, plant the mint in large plastic pots, and place the pots in the ground. Harvest the mint often to keep it from jumping out of the pot.

Another way to control mints rampant growth is to always grow it as a container plant on your patio.

Mint is a multi-purpose herb. Fancy chefs use fresh sprigs of mint to decorate their dessert creations. A sprig of fresh mint, a little bit of sugar, some crushed ice and good bourbon is a wonderful drink called a mint julep at Kentucky Derby time. By the way, mint makes an excellent ground cover.

Oswego Tea -- (Monarda didyma) Also known as bee balm because it is very attractive to bees, this member of the mint family is a native American perennial that the Iroquois used for making tea long before the Colonists came to these shores.

The leaves have a somewhat citrus flavor. It is also a very attractive ornamental plant that spreads freely in the garden. Buy one pot and transplant to the garden.

Chamomile -- German chamomile is an easy-to-grow annual that you use to make soothing chamomile tea. Simply plant the seeds in late spring, keep them watered until they germinate and you will be rewarded with dainty, daisy-like plants about 2 feet tall topped with tiny white flowers.

Roman chamomile is the shorter perennial variety of chamomile. This low growing spreading herb will fit in nicely along the cracks in your stone walk way or on the edges of your lawn. A chamomile lawn is considered quite the fancy in English gardens.

Lemon Balm -- (Melissa officinalis) Another mint-like plant, lemon balm has citrus flavored green leaves that make a very tasty tea. Bees are very attracted to the tiny flowers of lemon balm, hence its other name, Melissa.

I have found that young children are very attracted to the scent and oil of lemon balm. My daughter always makes a straight line to the lemon balm which she picks and rubs on her hands whenever she accompanies me to the herb garden. Buy one small pot and plant it in full sun. A perennial, it spreads slowly but persistently.

Anise Hyssop -- The leaves of anise hyssop give tea a lovely anise or liquorice flavor. This is a perennial plant here but it is not as hardy as rugged mint or lemon balm.

Besides its use in herb tea, anise hyssop is one of the loveliest garden plants you can grow. It produces small wands of lavender flowers in mid to late summer that last until frost. It is very attractive to butterflies. Buy one potted plant and set it in full sun to partial shade. If you prefer, anise hyssop is easy to grow from seed.

Alpine Strawberry -- (Fragaria vesca) Alpine strawberries are native to the eastern part of North America. The tiny red fruits are very tasty and the plants produce flowers and fruit for most of the summer.

The leaves have a very mild flavor and are good in tea. It makes a wonderful little front-of-the-border plant. Buy four potted plants and plant them in a sunny to part shade location. They also grow well as potted plants in a window box.

Like most herbs, these herbal tea plants like a well drained soil, rich in compost, but do not add any extra fertilizer. They just don't like it. They prefer to have what is now being called a "lean soil."

You can plant all of these herbs in spring and begin harvesting them as soon as they are large enough so that you can cut off about one third of their size.

Harvest the leaves of mint, monarda and lemon balm by cutting the stem off almost to the ground. These are rapid growers and new stems will soon emerge.

Prune the branches back about half way for anise hyssop and chamomile to harvest. Except for chamomile, the best time to harvest leaves is just before the plant sets its flowers. With chamomile, you want the flowers.

The best time of day to harvest herbs for drying is in the early morning, just after the dew has dried but before heat of the day begins to rob the plant of its essential oils.

Cut the branches or stems, gather them together in a bouquet and tie the stems together at the bottom with a string or rubber band. Hang the bouquet upside down in a cool, dry place for several days. Depending on the weather, the leaves will be dry in a week to ten days.

Gently strip the leaves from the stems and place them in a glass jar with a lid. Dried herb leaves will last for several months but they loose their best flavor within a few weeks. Fresh leaves and stems, wrapped in plastic, will stay fresh in the refrigerator for two to three days.

To make herb tea, fill a tea pot with leaves, start with two tablespoons fresh and 1 tablespoon dried for each cup. Cover with hot water, et steep for five minutes, strain, sweeten with sugar or honey and enjoy.

You can adjust the amount of tea you use to suit your own tastes. And you can start making your own tea blends. For me, chamomile is so distinctive it shouldn't be mixed with the other tea leaves but a little bit of strawberry or anise hyssop leaves, becasue they are also quite mild, can be a nice touch.