"You pulling that dead thing out, or what?" my neighbor called over the fence one March. He pointed at the gray, brittle clump in my front border by the kitchen window. I left it alone. By late April the same brown stub had pushed a ring of soft green shoots from its base. By June it spilled lavender flowers over the path again in my zone 5 yard.
So yes, Nepeta comes back every year. The simple answer to the nepeta perennial return question is this. Catmint is a true perennial, not an annual you replant each spring. Is catmint a perennial? It is, and a tough one. That is why the brown winter clump fooled my neighbor into thinking it had died.
Here is what drives the nepeta perennial return through the seasons. The plant dies back to the ground after a hard frost. The stems you see go brown and crisp. But the roots and the crown at soil level stay alive all winter. When the soil warms in spring, fresh growth pushes straight from the crown. It does not come from those old dead stems. That is the cycle every perennial follows, and catmint does it with no fuss.
Where you live sets how sure that return is. You can grow ornamental catmint across USDA zones 3 to 8. True catnip goes a bit further into zones 3 to 9. Those catmint hardiness zones cover most of the country. So for most gardeners the plant comes back on its own each year. Even in the coldest zones the roots still ride out the winter fine under the soil. You really only lose a plant when the spot stays cold and wet for weeks, since soggy roots rot far more than frozen ones do.
Let me show you what to watch for so spring does not surprise you the way it nearly surprised my neighbor.
The biggest mistake I see is people digging up the dormant plant. You look at the gray clump in fall or early spring, decide it is dead, and pull it out. Don't do that. The clump is just resting, and the living crown sits right under the surface. Leave the plant in the ground and let it wake up on its own schedule. If you dig it up, you throw away a plant that was about to return. When you want to be sure it is alive, scratch a stem near the base with your thumbnail. Green or white under the bark means the plant is still good.
You do have a choice with the old stems. You can leave them standing through winter. They give the crown a little cover and the seed heads feed birds. Or you can trim them back to a few inches once they brown out. Both ways work fine. The new shoots come from the base, so cutting the dead tops never hurts the plant. Keep that fact in mind and you can tidy the bed without any worry.
Set your eyes on the crown in spring, not the old growth. When a tidy mound of green leaves shows up around the base, your catmint comes back right on cue. Be patient if your spring runs late. The crown waits for warm soil, so a cold April can push that new growth back by a week or two. You have not lost the plant. It is just waiting for the right cue from the ground.
From there you can help your plant along. Give it a hard shear after the first flush of bloom, and you often get a second round of flowers by late summer. Each year the clump comes back a touch wider, so you can split a big one in spring and spread it around your beds for free. Leave that brown clump alone over winter, trust the roots below, and your Nepeta will reward you every single year.
Read the full article: Nepeta Plant: Care, Varieties, and Growing
