Introducing Columbine Meadow Rue & Coyote Mint + More

Monardella odoratissima (FlowerKisser™ Arizona Beauty Coyote Mint)

Coyote Mint provides months of summer color with its aromatic light blue powder puff flowers. This western native wildflower is a favorite nectar source for bees and butterflies.  Although much beloved by alpine rock gardeners, plants of this species in general cultivation are typically from very high elevations (around 10,000 ft. in UT). Their high mountain origins typically make them very unhappy when grown at lower elevations, where most folks garden. 

However, several years ago, I found a colony of Monardella odoratissima at a lower elevation (8,500 ft. elevation) in the foothills of east-central Arizona. I took cuttings and brought them back to Santa Fe, where I rooted them and planted the new plants into my test garden. They have performed wonderfully. I especially like to run my hands over the plants to release the very pleasing sweet, minty scent from their flowers and foliage. It’s a small compact grower that enjoys sun and part sun growing conditions in non-clay soils. Coyote Mint is best grown in the western US as humid summer heat and lots of rain is not to its liking.

Individual plants are not long lived (usually 3 to 4 years), but set plentiful seed and will produce volunteer seedlings when the seed heads are allowed to ripen and stay on the plant through winter. (Mulch them with small gravel mulch to encourage volunteers.) Because they are such long bloomers, the plant is also excellent in perennial container plantings as a “spiller” along the edges of the pot’s rim.

Recommended companion plants include Hymenoxys scaposa (Thrift Leaf Perky Sue), Penstemon pinifolius (yellow or orange flowered cultivars) and Festuca ‘Siskiyou Blue’.

I’d like to call you attention to more of the new FlowerKisser™ brand of pollinator-friendly perennials including FlowerKisser™ After Midnight English Lavender, FlowerKisser™ Dark Shadows Sage and FlowerKisser™ Coral-Pink Sage.  I’ve bred and/or selected them for their outstanding flower colors, resilient garden performance, resistance to browsing animals and the outstanding aromatic fragrance of the flowers and foliage.

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