Just my opinion based on my vast experience of making every mistake imaginable.....:) First I don't think putting it in a pot in the ground is necessary, they are shallow rooted and easily removed...... 2 when planting give it plenty of room.....not familiar with your cultivar but I grow 'Jacob Cline' and its mildew resistant but from what I've seen ain't none of them mildew proof..... 3. When it quits flowering and looks kinda ragged you can cut it down to the crown and it will put out new growth, may or may not rebloom....but if it does rebloom the blooms are low and few.. 4.I grow a yellow crocosmia in front of bee balm to hide its hideous legs after the blooms start to wind down or it gets mildew.....the foliage of 'George Davidson' crocosmia is great in itself and for hiding the bee balm legs......Good luck I love bee balm as you can see....i got 4 stands of it scattered around...... Paul from Alabama Here is a link that might be useful: Jacob Cline bee balm

Well, I did not still have the receipt, since they were bought last summer, and I am not sure I would trust them to have the replacements marked correctly anyway. I went to the garden center here in town instead of going back to that other nursery. She had a few very scraggly lychnis chalcedonica (Maltese Cross), which would eventually be the right height, but they were just about done blooming for the year and were only 12 - 15" tall. She didn't have anything else red, not even some annuals. I ended up buying a couple of 'Orange Perfection' tall phlox to fill in the spaces for now. At least I will have something blooming, even though they are much smaller than what was there before. I almost feel guilty admitting this, but it felt really good to dig those plants up today. I have heard so much about them attracting bees, butterflies, and hummers, but the only thing mine were attracting were grasshoppers. I squashed at least 7 or 8 while digging them up. Every day I was finding a half dozen or more on them. There are grasshoppers on the coreopsis and yarrow too, but they don't seem to be eating those plants, just using them for shelter. Maybe now that the bee balm is gone the grasshoppers will move on to someone else's yard.

I am not growing any Monarda so have no preference. I have noticed though that deer generally do not like plants of the Lamiaceae family, many of which have the gray foliage you mention. I don't think the deer consider the color of the plants they eat,either the flower or foliage. A deer's sence of smell is hundreds of times better than ours and when a plant has a noticeanle odor for us it smells overpowering to deer and they leave it alone. Al

Cancel this post - GW has reverted my account back to McPeg instead of deleting McPeg.