Monarda, the plant that bees love that helps prepare soothing balms

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Rustle the leaves of this bushy perennial and a lemon-like scent rises from flowers of scarlet, wine red or violet purple. Bee balm (Monarda) flavours infusions and tossed salads, eases coughs and sore throats, and pulls in pollinators; keep the soil moist and rich in a sunny spot and it blooms generously from early summer to early autumn.

Useful to all for its many medicinal properties (Monarda) and cooking flavor, it’s also a very ornamental plant.

Key facts to remember

Planting bee balm

It’s recommended to plant the rhizomes in spring, with a spacing distance of about 1 foot or 30 cm from one plant to the next.

• Bee balm loves sun-filled spots.
• Soil must be moist and rich enough for the blooming to be truly noteworthy.
• Bee balm tends to turn invasive, so it’s best to plant it somewhere where it’s easy to keep it under control.

• You can also give it an extra boost with amendments such as manure and seaweed, a few handfuls at the bottom of the planting hole.

Propagate beebalm through clump division in spring, or through cuttings.

Pruning and caring for bee balm

Cut back short at the end of the season, but not before leaves and flowers have wilted away entirely.

During the blooming, you can deadhead your flowers as they fade away, to trigger more blooming and new flowers.

If your beebalm shows signs of a whitish powder on its leaves, it’s surely due to a disease called powdery mildew.

• Here is how to treat against powdery mildew on beebalm.

• Bee balm suffers quickly in dry ground, and drought-stressed clumps are the first to break out in powdery mildew, so water deeply during dry spells and keep a mulch over the roots.
• Thin crowded bee balm clumps by pulling out the weakest shoots at the base while they are still low, so that air moves freely between the remaining stems and mildew spores find it harder to take hold.
• Water monarda at the base rather than overhead: its common problem is powdery mildew, favoured by humidity, crowding and poor air circulation, so keeping foliage dry and plants well spaced helps.
• When the middle of a bee balm clump goes bare and woody with flowering pushed out to the edges, lift it, replant the vigorous outer pieces and discard the exhausted centre.
• Bag and bin mildewed leaves and prunings rather than adding them to a cool compost heap, since several mildews can overwinter on plant debris and late spring infect new growth the following season.

Bee balm through the year: what to do and when

Each stage of the bee balm year calls for a different task, from planting the rhizomes to harvesting blossoms for drying. Use this calendar to see at a glance what the plant needs and when.

Kept to this rhythm, bee balm will flower generously from early summer right through to early autumn.

Which bee balm to choose?

Bee balms differ mainly in flower colour, final height and how well they shrug off powdery mildew. The following widely sold varieties cover everything from the back of a border to a pot by the door.

Uses of bee balm

This pretty perennial with a bushy bearing has beautiful flowers that are particularly fragrant. They release a delicious lemon-like scent if you rustle the leaves a bit.

It has a great many uses in cooking and in treating benign ailments: simply as an infusion for a flavorful tea party; and the flowers are edible in a tossed salad for instance.

It has therapeutic properties regarding cough and sore throat.

Note that dried beebalm flowers and leaves are often used in pot-pourri, where they release their citrus-y fragrance for a long time.

To prepare the dried flowers, just cut the blossoms when they just open, early morning, and hang the stems upside-down in a well-ventilated shed (no direct sun).