The catmints tend to be excellent nectar flowers - Nepeta x faassenii 'Six Hills Giant' being perhaps the most commonly grown out there, which can heave with bees.

So I was pleased while hunting around a garden centre at the weekend to see yet another cultivar 'doing the business' on the bee front - and with a butterfly indulging too.

The plant is Nepeta 'Walkers Low', which some people list as another x faassenii cultivar, while others call it a cultivar of Nepeta racemosa, originally a wild plant from the Caucasus. The RHS go with the latter, so I won't argue!

It grows to maybe 60cm (2 foot) tall, forming a good clump of rather greyish leaves with neatly serrated edges, and then sprouting numerous upright stems decked with, for catmints, quite large  flowers, big-lipped and mauve.

Here (left) is my Small White butterfly and bumble playing good neighbours.

I normally avoid catmints like the plague, not because I don't like them (I love them) but because the local cats like them even more than I do and will trash them within days. Now I have read that cats are not so keen on Walkers Low, but at £6.99 it was too expensive as an experiment. But if you have catmint experiences you'd like to share - good or bad - you know what to do: add a comment!

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