Time to try Agastache

If you want plants for late-season colour that provide nectar for butterflies and bees, why not try something different with the gorgeous agastache, says Louise Curley

- Louise Curley

THERE are a whole host of plants, such as asters, heleniums and dahlias, that add a splash of colour to the late summer and autumn garden. However, if you’re looking for something a bit different to pep up your planting then it’s worth giving agastache a try.

Also known as hyssop, agastache is a member of the mint family and has similar shaped leaves that have an aniseed scent. These plants are native to China, Japan, the USA and Mexico, where they thrive on poor soil that’s well drained. In British gardens they struggle with cold, wet winters, which means they tend to be short-lived perennials. Yet their flower power is hard to beat, with their nectar-rich blooms being especially popular with bees and butterflies (and hummingbirds in the Americas).

From midsummer through to the first frosts, they pump out tall stems that tend to form fat bottlebrush-like heads made up of small flowers. Some of the more tender species have looser flowerheads consisting of longer tubular blooms. While the most commonly grown varieties made popular in prairie-style plantings by designers such as Piet Oudolf have purple flowers, there’s a good range, including white, yellow, shades of pink and several exotic shades of orange. They tend to grow to 7090cm (27-36in) tall, but plants from the Kudos range developed recently in the USA are more compact and have been bred to be more tolerant of cold, wet soil.

Lovers of good drainage