Catmint
Perhaps the best value-for-effort bee plant in a temperate garden. Catmint produces a haze of small violet flowers from late May, and if it is cut back hard after the first flush it will do the whole thing again and carry on into October. It is drought-tolerant, entirely undemanding, and worked continuously by bumblebees from the moment it opens.
Value to bees
- Nectar
- Very high
- Pollen
- Moderate
- As a honey crop
- Feeds the colony but rarely yields a surplus
- Which bees, and why
- Worked most heavily by bumblebees, which fit the flower shape best, but honey bees and solitary bees use it freely too. It is also a favoured territory for male wool carder bees, which will patrol a catmint clump and drive other bees off it.
A short two-lipped tube with the nectar within reach of a honey bee's tongue, so it is genuinely available across the range rather than only to long-tongued species.
- Worth knowing
- Very high nectar over an exceptionally long season. Its ratings are strong and its real distinction is duration.
Flowering
- In flower
- May to October (northern hemisphere)
A long first flush from late May, then — if cut back by about a third in July — a second flush that runs to the frosts. Very few perennials give five months of forage from one plant.
- When nectar flows
- Secretes freely in sun and tolerates drought well. It keeps producing in hot dry weather when many border perennials stop.
- Year-to-year variation
- Extremely dependable. Not a honey crop.
Growing it
- Conditions
- Full sun, well-drained soil, no feeding. It flops on rich ground.
- Size
- 45-90 cm tall and as wide.
- Native range
- Europe, Asia and North Africa.
- Suits
- Containers and window boxes, Small gardens, Large gardens, Hedgerow
- The single most useful action is the mid-season cut-back: shear it by a third once the first flush fades and it reflowers within three weeks.
- Cats genuinely do roll in it and can flatten a young plant. A few twiggy sticks pushed in around a new one solves it.
- Sterile hybrids such as 'Six Hills Giant' flower longer than the seed-bearing species precisely because they cannot set seed, which is one of the rare cases where a garden hybrid is better for bees than the wild form.
What it looks like
A soft grey-green aromatic perennial forming a spreading mound, with loose spikes of small two-lipped lavender-blue flowers. The common garden hybrid Nepeta × faassenii and the larger 'Six Hills Giant' are the ones usually sold.
Sources
- Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland — Bloomsbury (2015) · Field guide
- Bumblebees: Behaviour, Ecology, and Conservation — Oxford University Press (2010) · Monograph
How sources are selected and weighted is set out in the sources and evidence policy.
Guides covering this plant
- How to make a garden genuinely useful to beesMost bee-friendly advice covers flowers in June, which is the one thing bees are least short of. The gaps are at the ends of the year — and half the problem is not flowers at all.
- The best plants for beesA shortlist chosen on three criteria: how much nectar and pollen the plant produces, how accessible it is to different bees, and when it flowers. Season coverage matters more than any individual plant.
- The best flowers for beesHerbaceous flowers rather than trees and shrubs, chosen for output and length of season. Most of them are things you can grow in a border or a container.
- Bee plants for a small gardenA small garden cannot do everything, so it should do the things large gardens usually skip: the winter and early spring gaps, and nesting habitat. Both take almost no space.
- Bee plants for a balconyBees will find a balcony several floors up, and containers can be genuinely productive. The constraints are watering, wind and depth, and the plants that handle all three are mostly Mediterranean herbs.
- Plants for bumblebeesLong tongues, big bodies, cold tolerance and an annual colony that has to build from a single queen. Bumblebees can use flowers honey bees cannot reach, and they need forage at both ends of the year when honey bees are indoors.
- Long-flowering plants for beesA plant in flower for five months does the work of three plants in flower for six weeks, and removes the timing problem that defeats most bee planting. These are the ones that keep going.
Tools for planning planting
- Flowering calendar
What should I plant so that something is always in flower for bees?
- Bee-friendly garden planner
What should I plant in the space I actually have?
- Plant recommendation tool
Which plant fills this specific gap?