However, many of us rejoice in daily cups of tea and it is said that King Charles prefers Darjeeling. Twinings is promoting the 2023 First Flush harvest of Darjeeling, grown in West Bengal, India.

The flavour is described as floral, fruit aroma and muscatel. Some years ago a Canberra couple planted a plantation of camellia tea (Camellia sinensis var sinensis) at the far South Coast of NSW.

My taste buds prefer Dilmah Premium Ceylon tea with milk first thing every morning and, to close the day, Twinings lemon and ginger herb tea. However for May 6 my daughter brought me a glamorous cylinder of Fortnum & Mason infusion silky tea bags made "in celebration of the coronation of HM King Charles III" inspired by the tropical colours, flavours and carnival spirit of the Caribbean. David Jones is selling it online.

A necessary addition to the tea table was, of course, toast and marmalade. On the ABC's pre-Coronation telecast there was a familiar name, that of Reuben Kooperman from Perth. We featured him in a Kitchen Garden column (April 23, 2019) when he was consul-general for Thailand but his passion was preserves, especially marmalade, which he had been making for 35 years.

Kooperman's Seville oranges were grown by his wife Deborah and he had won two gold medals in The World's Original Marmalade Awards through a festival held at Dalemain Mansion and historic gardens in Cumbria. On the ABC he gave hints for making a superior marmalade: it should be clear and luminescent with the rind finely sliced and a taste harmony between bitterness and sweetness. It takes two days to make.

We shared his recipe for Seville orange tangelo and Cointreau Marmalade in 2019 but this year's winner of "Marmalade for the King" had to be Orange Marmalade with no alcohol. The winning jar, out of more than 3000 entries from all over the world, was being delivered to King Charles to be served on his breakfast toast.

No readers correctly guessed our mystery plant was African blue basil (Kitchen Garden, May 2). However Stewart Bath came up with an interesting response. He thought it was amaranth, "a very widespread plant and all parts are edible. It grows wild in many places ... It was included in a 19^th Century poem called The Hound of Heaven by a British poet named Francis Thompson ... which I studied in school but never understood until I saw a specimen in a community garden in Tuggeranong." Then Stewart quotes:

"Ah! is Thy love indeed

A weed albeit an amaranthine weed,

Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?"

There is a stirring reading online by Richard Burton.

Amaranth was first cultivated in Mexico 7000 years ago, considered a staple food and used in Aztec religious practices. In recent years Mexico's native grain has been regarded as a superfood.

Also growing in the ANU herb garden at The Plot was another plant with which I was not familiar.

It was Tulsi basil and a student who told me that he and other students from Nepal were keen to harvest it. Earlier this year in The Canberra Times we learnt that the most recent census showed Nepal as the fifth most common place of birth in the ACT and the third most spoken language in the territory after English and Mandarin.

My favourite barista, Ganesh from EQ cafe in Deakin, is also from Nepal and he said Tulsi, or Holy basil, is grown all over Nepal. In Canberra he and his wife buy it, dried, at a Woden Nepalese supermarket as a tea to drink weekly for health.

Keen to try Tulsi as a tea, we went to Lakeside Gurkhas restaurant at Kingston Foreshore which has only been open for six months. Sitting in the sunshine eating crunchy corn and momos for lunch was fun but Tulsi was not on the menu.

Fortunately the manager came over to greet us and he said he and his wife, Snehalata K.C., grow Holy basil in Ngunnawal, as do many of their friends. When I disclosed that I write the Kitchen Garden column he said if I rang ahead next time they would bring in some tulsi to try.

Next visit will be to try the momos at the highly recommended Nepalese restaurant Chomolungma in Manuka but tulsi is not on their menu either.