Plant of the Weekend: Calamint
Saturday, Sept 17th we’re hosting our 1st ever Lurie Garden Fall Festival & Plant Sale. Several superstar plants of the Lurie Garden will be available for purchase in our maintenance yard (located under the Nichols bridge) including our featured plant-of-the-weekend, calamint. The calamint genus includes perennial plants with small, oregano-like leaves and a pleasing minty aroma. The native range is wide, with species in Europe, Middle-East, and North America. The leaves of many varieties of calamint are dried and used in Middle-Eastern cooking. Essential oil from this plant can be used to clear the sinuses. The name comes from the Greek, kala, meaning beautiful. Our beautiful Calamintha nepeta ssp. nepeta (native to Europe) grows in neat clumps that form a green mound in spring and maintains its rounded shape until mid-June when the flower spikes emerge from the tidy foliage. Calamint reaches about knee-high (1.5 ft) when in bloom. Unlike other mints, this sterile plant stays terrifically tame. The double-lipped, tubular white blooms darken to a lavender color as the weather cools off in early fall, giving this plant a long bloom season. On a sunny day calamint is covered in honeybees and other winged creatures seeking nectar. Hummingbirds are known to grace this plant as well! No chemicals or fertilizers are required to keep this plant healthy, and once established calamint requires minimal watering. Calamint prefers full sun and is hardy to zone 5. Stop by on September 17th to learn morew about this plant. Roy Diblik of Northwind Perennial Farm will be available to help with gardening questions during our sale.
Calamintha nepeta subsp. nepeta
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