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A Hot New Blue

© Emily Levitt

Gardening surprises are always memorable. While searching at a chic garden shop for a gift , I found a very tall purple/blue flowering plant, framing an over-priced terracotta "antique."

"What IS this? "I asked the cute khaki cashier. "Uh, I think it's butterfly bush. That's forty five dollars."

"No, it isn't." I knew what it wasn't, anyway. And the price was way, way off.

"Really? Then it must be salvia. I'm pretty sure that's what it is," she grinned. "You're in luck , salvia is only twenty dollars!"

"No, it must be a big weed, then it has to be free." She didn't even snicker at that comment.

" OH. Then I'll have to ask for the manager," she chirped , and off she went. Good idea. I figured it was something worth paying for, because the leaves looked like a mint, the flowers looked like salvia and the habit did look like buddleia.

As you might have guessed, what I fell in love with was Agastache, a genus unique to the United States, and a big player in the mint family. I thought hyssop was a small garden herb, a little-used medicinal element, or an obscure tea ingredient. (Okay, when I'm wrong, I'm wrong.) Texas boasts a large collection of hyssop, aka: native horse mint.

Yep, that's right, Bub--but humans can eat it too. Many other Southern states have indigenous agastache, but only a few have reached the spectacular garden proportions of giant hyssop, 'agastache foeniculum.' The south has warm winter climates, in which these wonderful mints are genuine perennials. It's hardy to zone 7 or 8, but wonderful as an annual elsewhere. I am told by friends who have them, they aren't terribly aggressive in a controlled garden environment.

Therefore, I rushed home and put my newly acquired giant hyssop in the sunniest spot in my garden. It was an instant bee magnet--I had to brush the buzzers away while I was putting the agastache's feet in the ground! And the next morning, it was covered with butterflies. What a delight!

The 'hot spot' in my yard is really a gardenette, a micro-climate at my front door which receives full sun at high noon and beyond. The hyssop is happy at the back of a grouping of bright colors:"Moon Traveler" dayliliy (a light yellow cultivar of
Stella d'Oro) hot pink carpet roses, white and blue ageratum, and a large pot of red pineapple-scented salvia. Pink and yellow coreopsis are in there, too, but are just now budding up.