How to Grow Catmint Plant Profile

Caring for and Maintaining Nepeta in the Garden Landscape

May 16, 2009

Catmint was originally grown as an herb for tea and to keep flying pests out of the garden. Now, many cultivars are highly ornamental.

As plant hybridizers have turned their attention to the lowly catmint herb, new named cultivars bloom in pink, purple, white and blue and the form has become more full and bushy. Adding catmint to a perennial border will provide many weeks of color and interest.

Cultivation Information and How to Grow Nepeta

Bloom Time and Color: Catmint has flower spikes for many weeks through the summer and is known to bloom from May through September with ease. Flowers are traditionally purple, but cultivars are available with white, pink, blue-toned, and lavender flower spikes.

Foliage: The foliage was traditionally used in herbal teas, potpourri and sachets and the fuzzy leaves are highly aromatic.

Growth Habit: Catmint grows in a loose, rounded growth habit but the flower spikes can create an upright impression. Some cultivars are shorter and tend to fall open loosely, causing gardeners to use them as ground covers. Other cultivars hold a compact, bushy form better even without a mid-season pruning.

Maintenance: Catmint plants are fairly low maintenance although sheering the plant down to a few inches in mid-summer can help create another full flush of flowers. Because catmint naturalizes easily in most gardens, landscapers may need to weed out volunteer seedlings.

Propagation Methods: Catmint self-sows readily in most garden landscapes but the seedlings will not always come true from seed.

Using Catmint in the Garden

Preferred Conditions: Catmint needs well-draining soil conditions and does well in rocky or sandy soil and container plantings. It needs full sun to bloom well.

Companion Plants: Catmint blends well with many other plants because of the silver tone to the leaves and pale, unobtrusive flower colors. Try combining nepeta with other herbs like lemon balm, thyme and marjoram. Or use catmint in a perennial border with other flowering plants like roses, foxglove, phlox and hardy geranium.

Seasons of Interest: Catmint provides interest in the landscape spring through fall.

Uses in the Garden: Catmint is a great addition to a fragrance garden, herbal tea garden, natural garden, butterfly garden or rock garden. The lowest growing cultivars make good ground covers to hide stems of taller, leggy plants like tall salvia, or to cover the fading leaves of spring bulbs like daffodils and tulips. Other cultivars can be used to shade the roots of climbing plants like Clematis, which prefer their roots in shade and their tops in sun, or to better blend woody perennial shrubs like roses into the landscape.

With so many uses and a variety of colors available, it is easy for gardeners to add catmint to almost any landscape condition.

The copyright of the article How to Grow Catmint Plant Profile in Perennial Plants is owned by Angela England. Permission to republish How to Grow Catmint Plant Profile in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.