The ajuga that infests large parts of my back garden is blooming and its blue spires light up the entire planting scheme. The plants also attract a lot of attention. Bees of all kinds are rampant, as are butterflies. Earlier in the week I saw five red admiral butterflies, distinguished by the broad orange stripes on their wings, working their way through the ajuga. Pollination was in full swing.
We all need pollinators – as many as possible. Those of us who grow fruits and vegetables would have nothing to harvest without them. Even die-hard ornamental gardeners need them. Without pollination plants do not set seed and there is no next generation. This may not bother you – especially if you are tired of voracious self seeders – but it is bad for the ecosystem as a whole.
Some of the best pollinators around belong to the Labiatae or mint family. The ajuga that turns my yard into Pollination Central is a one of them. You can tell by the shape of its tiny blossoms, which are characteristically minty-looking. If you examine them closely, you will see that there are five petals on each flower, joined at the base to form a tube. The flowers, which appear in groups of two to twelve individual blossoms, occur in the leaf axils, where the leaf stalks meet the stems. They are clustered at the tops of the stalks, another typical mint trait.
Most people know the value of culinary mints, like spearmint, peppermint, basil, thyme and sage. Their flowers attract scores of pollinators, but with culinary specimens the interests of the cook or herbalist are best served by thwarting the intentions of the plant. Young leaves have the best flavor and should be harvested regularly to prevent flowering. If you let nature take its course and the plants flower, the leaves often have a bitter taste.
Those considerations should not stop anyone from planting culinary mints, which can be left to flower at the end of each growing season. Pollinators will also flock to the wide variety of ornamental mint plants. If you have a vegetable garden, edge it with decorative mint relations and you will assure yourself of plenty of tomatoes, zucchini and peppers.
I love my ajuga because it is a triple threat – weed stomping groundcover, decorative ornamental and effective pollinator attractant. One of my other favorite mints is agastache, which has grown increasingly fashionable in the last ten years. Sometimes called anise hyssop or hummingbird mint, agastache has an array of virtues. It grows in just about any spot, is drought tolerant, reblooms regularly throughout the season and overwinters without a problem. It dies back to the ground when frost hits, but rises like the Phoenix every spring. Agastache flower colors range from darkest blue purple to shades of orange, pink and white. I grow the dark purple ‘Black Adder’ in the back garden and ‘Acapulco Salmon and Pink’ in the front. The latter smells like lemon and blooms almost perpetually. I will probably invest in more agastache this year, because they multi-task so effectively and attractively.
Another popular mint is nepeta or catmint. As the name suggests, it attracts cats as well as pollinators, but the cat-luring properties are not as strong as those of its relative, catnip or Nepeta cataria. The most common catmints sport blue flowers, though there are varieties like ‘Sweet Dreams’ and ‘Snowflake’ that produce pink or white flowers. Catmint grows between eight and twelve inches tall and flowers repeatedly, especially if it is sheared back after each flowering. The shearing process is not rocket science; you can even do it with your string trimmer if you are careful and leave at least six inches of the plant behind.
There are those who also have great affection for monarda, though I am not one of them. It is a favorite of butterflies, hummingbirds, bees and other pollinators and is also known as Oswego tea or wild bergamot. It smells a bit like Earl Grey tea, though the tea is flavored with a citrus oil obtained from Citrus bergamia or bergamot orange. Monarda’s fluffy-looking flowerheads are composed of whorls of long, spiky tubes and come in shades of white, yellow, rose, red and purple. Like other mints, monarda thrives in just about any sunny situation. However, many older varieties have gangly growth habits and are extremely susceptible to mildew, which disfigures the leaves. If you like monarda, try buying newer, mildew-resistant cultivars. Compact varieties are more graceful, but you can also mitigate gangliness by installing shorter plants in front of your monarda clumps.
Mint’s big drawback is invasiveness. Left to its own devices spearmint would take over the world, with ajuga hot on its heels. Control these wayward but very useful plants by growing them in pots that can either stand alone on a terrace or deck, or be sunk directly into the garden so the plants are indistinguishable from their neighbors. Barring pot culture, keep an eye on your mints and grub out any unwanted travelers. This will not hurt the mints in the least and will keep the garden – and everything else within a fifty mile radius -safe for better bred specimens.