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Ava's Hummingbird Mint (Agastache)
The other day, I posted about my favorite plants. One of the plants I mentioned, Ava’s Hummingbird Mint (agastache), is discouragingly expensive. It is on sale this week at High Country Gardens* (the only place where you can buy it). It is still expensive, but every little bit helps!
*I am not affiliated with High Country Gardens in any way, except that: 1) I have spent too much money there and 2) I have greatly benefited from their wonderful website, their beautiful catalog, and their good advice about waterwise gardening.
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6 Responses to “Sale on Hummingbird Mint!”
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We LOVE love LOVE High Country Gardens. Aren’t they the best?
Thanks for the tip–After your last post I wanted to get some of this.
I’ve got some mint but I’d never heard of the hummingbird kind–it sounds similar to the nepata (catmint) I have. Does it spread as much as most mint varieties do?
I tore up a lot of my flower beds last year with the remodel we did so that I’m going to have to be replanting quite a bit this spring.
That looks beautiful…what are the growing requirements (soil, sun/shade)? I would love to have more hummingbirds around–we see them every once in a while, so I know they’re out there. If spreading is an issue, I just learned a cool trick to control it. Just put the plant in one of those cheap little plastic pots, with good soil and make sure it has good drainage, and then plant it in the ground in the pot. It keeps the roots contained so that it doesn’t spread, but it can still get all the nutrients and everything it needs from the soil. I haven’t tried this trick yet, but it sounded pretty simple.
Michelle, I also love catmint (Nepeta). It was on the list of 8 favorite plants I did this week. My catmint is the “Walker’s Low” cultivar. It is shorter than the hummingbird mint (Agastache) and it gets going in the spring while the hummingbird mint is still asleep–it blooms in late summer. Catmint is a gorgeous purpley blue, where the hummingbird mint is dark hot pink. I have seen Walker’s Low Catmint recommended as a companion plant for agastache (of which Hummingbird Mint is an example). See this article on awesome agastache.
Catmint and hummingbird mint are both members of the Lamiaceae (mint) family which is why they both have fragrant leaves. I am no expert on these plants by any means as I have had mine for only one year! However, I don’t think they spread the way mint does. Mint produces no seed; it reproduces through underground stolons (which is why people often plant mint pot and all in order to keep it contained, as Robin recommended). There was a note on the High Country Gardens website that explained that if you plant different agastaches together, you might get some seeds that germinate. These are usually weak and inferior, so they recommend just pulling them up. Anyway, I only have hummingbird mint, I don’t have any other agastaches, so I am hoping that this won’t be a problem for me. We’ll see.
Robin,
Hummingbird Mint likes full sun but apparently tolerates light shade. I can’t speak to that from experience because mine were south facing in the fullest full sun possible.
On the listing for Agastache “Ava” on the High Country Gardens website, it says to plant it in “enriched” garden soil. However, I think this is probably a mistake, unless I’m misinterpreting “enriched.” At the bottom of that same page it recommends average or sandy garden soil and in an article about planting agastache on their website, it recommends “lean, well-drained soils,” as well as “gravel mulches.” They also note that because this is a xeric (waterwise) plant, after the second growing season, “deep but infrequent watering” is the way to go.
I completely agree–Hummingbirds are a joy!