Mountain Mint
Pycnanthemum muticum
Silver-dusted bracts around small flowers, and mint scent from every leaf that gets crushed.
- Type
- Flower · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Silver and gray · Green
- Flower color
- White
- Sunlight
- Content in full sun, and equally so in partial shade.
- Watering
- Average moisture is enough, and dry spells pass harmlessly once it is established.
- Feeding
- Little feeding — average soil is exactly what it wants.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- June
- Pruning
- Cut back in early spring; deadheading is optional and light.
- Mar–May Spring Growth
- May–Jun Bud Break
- Jun–Sep Flowering
- Sep–Nov Growing
- Nov–Dec Winter Dormancy
- Jan–Mar Winter Dormancy
- Plant spacing
- 19.7 in
- In-row spacing
- 19.7 in
- Between rows
- 21.7 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Running rhizomes
- Working depth
- 4–12 in
- Can reach
- 18 in down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 4–8 ft across, about 2–4× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 12 in of soil
It travels underground, and it does not stop where you would like it to. Taking the tops off does nothing at all to the run, and every fragment left behind is a new plant. In open ground the only boundary that holds is a barrier sunk two spits deep, or a container with its rim standing clear of the soil.
The habit is Mountain Mint’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Generally trouble-free No notable pest or disease problems when grown in the right conditions — one of the easy ones.
Echinacea, Monarda, Rudbeckia, Native grasses
Green-leaved flowers, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com