Poor Richard’s Almanac

Here at Hawk’s Haven, the rural cottage our friend Ben and Silence Dogood share in the precise middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania, monarda is in full bloom. We have huge clumps of both red-flowered bee balm, Monarda didyma, and the slightly smaller-flowered red-violet wild bergamot, Monarda fistulosa. Both look fabulous, and are providing huge blasts of color in our far-back perennial borders at a time when daylilies, achilleas (yarrows), bellflowers (campanulas), hostas, and milkweeds are about the only other blooming plants in our gardens.

But the masses of brilliant color aren’t the only reasons we love our monardas. As its name suggests, bee balm is a bumblebee magnet. But it and its cousin bergamot also are irresistible to hummingbirds, hummingbird moths, and other nectar lovers. While our lush milkweed plantings are feeding monarch butterfly caterpillars, the monardas are drawing more immediately colorful visitors to our property, not to mention important pollinators at the moment our squash and cukes could use them most.

Both the leaves and flowers of bee balm and bergamot are fragrant—they’re in the mint family—and bee balm leaves were used by the Native Americans to make a fragrant citrusy, minty tea called Oswego tea. The Colonists enjoyed this herbal tea during the days of the Boston Tea Party, when patriots were boycotting black tea to protest British taxation. If you grow bee balm, you can try a cup yourself. Add 1 tablespoon of dried leaves or about 1/2 cup of fresh leaves to a cup of boiling water, steep 5 minutes, strain, sweeten to taste (Silence and I drink our herb teas unsweetened, since we think it brings out the flavors of the herbs), and drink. Add a lemon slice for a special citrus kick.

The dried flowers and leaves of both bee balm and wild bergamot will add color and fragrance to potpourris and sachets, and the dried flowers can look spectacular on dried-flower wreaths.

Like most mint family members, both bee balm and wild bergamot have been used in herbal remedies, both by Native Americans and the Shakers. Its active ingredient, thymol, makes it popular as a steam bath to clear the sinuses. The tea has also been used to treat everything from nausea and an upset stomach to insomnia, colds, and sore throats. We love the idea of growing your own herbal pharmacy!

You may wonder why we grow such showy plants at the back of our property rather than putting them front and center in our front-yard beds. The answer is simple: When not in bloom, the plants don’t look like much. We try to make sure the plants that grow nearest the house and road have a great habit—wonderful form and foliage as well as flowers—so they’re attractive even when they aren’t blooming. Monardas send up pretty boring stems in weedy-looking clumps when they aren’t in bloom. We like to keep them near our veggie beds, where we can admire the blooms from our deck without having the plants in our faces when they’re not blooming. But oh, what a show when they are in bloom! Fortunately, the vibrant flower colors make big clumps of monarda easy to appreciate from afar.

One last thing: We have no mildew problems with our monardas, but some folks apparently aren’t as fortunate. If you’ve had trouble growing mildew-free monardas in the past, or you know that mildew is an issue in your garden, try mildew-resistant cultivars like purple-flowered ‘Scorpio’ or red-flowered ‘Jacob Kline’ or ‘Gardenview Scarlet’.