Agastache Liquorice Blue

Upright violet-blue bottlebrush spikes from July to the first frosts, above foliage that smells strongly of aniseed and liquorice the moment you brush it. It reaches 70 to 90cm in its first summer and flowers the same year from a spring sowing, which is unusual for a perennial.

If you grow one plant for bees, grow this. The spikes carry nectar so freely that an established clump is audible on a warm August afternoon, and it keeps going through late summer when a lot of the border has finished. Rabbits and deer leave the aromatic leaves alone.

Call it short-lived and you will not be disappointed. In sharp-draining sunny ground it will give you three or four years. In heavy soil, or through a wet Norfolk winter, it will rot at the crown and you will be sowing again in spring. Drainage matters far more than feeding, and a plant on poor dry ground usually outlives a pampered one. Cut it for the vase and the scent comes indoors with it. It dries well too, spikes and all.