Growing Nepeta (Catmint): Pick The Best & Enjoy The Show

There are several hundred species of Nepeta and many additional selections (cultivars) that had been selected for improved garden performance. But I recommend caution when purchasing catmint plants for your yard. I strongly recommend planting only sterile hybrids and avoiding any Nepeta that are propagated from seed. The seed-grown catmints can be aggressively weedy, spreading themselves throughout the garden and crowding out neighboring perennials.

I've experimented with numerous species and selections of Nepeta in my gardens over many years. And based on my experiences I can enthusiastically recommend two outstanding, sterile (no seeds), long-blooming varieties.

• Select Blue Nepeta - a selection I made back in the early 1990's from a patch of plants I found in an office park landscape, this low growing, non-spreading plant has beautiful lavender-blue flowers. In early summer after the first flush of flowers have faded, Shear off the flower spikes just above the foliage to get the plants to re-bloom again later in the summer.
• Walker's Low Nepeta - named after an English castle and not for its size, this cultivar has showy deep blue flowers on tall flower spikes. 'Walker's Low' grows as a neat, non-suckering, well-behaved plant and blooms for many months from late spring into mid-summer. Deadheading (shearing off the faded flower spikes just above the foliage) will encourage stronger re-blooming.

Red Mountain Flame Ice Plant with

Select Blue Nepeta

Caradonna Salvia with Walker's Low Nepeta

Catmint's blue flowers mix beautifully with all the other flower colors. And they thrive in the same growing conditions of these perennials:

• Meadow Sage (Salvia sylvestris): 'May Night', 'Little Night', 'Caradonna', 'Lyrical Rose'
• Platinum Dwarf Silver Leaf Salvia (Salvia daghestanica)
• Valerian, Jupiter's Beard (Centranthus ruber): 'White', 'Red', 'Pink'
• Yarrow (Achillea): 'Coronation Gold', 'Moonshine', 'Red Velvet', 'Terra Cotta'
• Cotton Candy Lamb's Ear (Stachys lavandulifolius)
• Poppy Mallow or Wine Cups (Callirhoe involucrata)

*Nepeta cataria and a few other Nepeta species are the "drug" of choice for house cats. They contain nepetalactone which binds to the olfactory receptors of cats, typically resulting in temporary euphoria.