Everything you Need to Grow Your Own Herbs
Parsley is a useful biennial that will grow outdoors in colder climates and basil being a tender annual. Both can be used in cooking with slightly different taste profiles and history of culinary uses. Nutritionally both of these herbs are loaded with vitamins and minerals as well.
Allspice is a dried berry that hasn’t quite matured. Mixed spice is a collection of dried spices such as cinnamon, coriander and caraway seeds, ginger root, nutmeg and cloves. Allspice is more of a savory ingredient, whereas mixed spice goes into your Winter cake mixes.
Both mint and lemon balm will grow easily in most gardens and tend towards invasive as they are perennials that will set out runners. From the Lamiaceae they vary in that mint has over 40 different varieties while there is only one Lemon Balm, easy to use in cooking as replacements for each other.
Allspice and cloves do have a lot in common with regard to flavor and how they are used. Both share an intense, pungent aroma and taste with allspice including tones of nutmeg, pepper, cinnamon and cloves. Cloves tend more towards a sweetness that is absent in allspice.
Both basil and bay leaves are essential to many Mediterranean dishes and can grow with a little care quite happily in the UK and colder climates.
Chinese five spice has an origin as being a bit of use all spice blend. One which hits all five of the areas for taste that we humans have. Bitter, Sweet, Sour, Savory (umami) and salty. There is no one specific blend and it has been adapted as it moves through Asia over the decades.