Nepeta Plant: Care, Varieties, and Growing

The nepeta plant is the kind of perennial that does the hard work and asks for almost nothing back. It fills a hot, sunny border with soft mounds of lavender-blue flowers for months. Bad soil and missed waterings that kill fussier plants barely faze it. If you want color that lasts without a chore list, this is your plant.

Most people call it catmint, and that name causes a lot of confusion. Nepeta is the genus. Catmint is the common name for the tidy garden types, and catnip is just one species inside that same group. So the plant that drives your cat wild and the one lining a flower bed are cousins, not the same thing. Knowing which one you grow changes everything.

This is a tough plant by any measure. It belongs to the mint family, and it comes back year after year as a hardy perennial in USDA zones 3 to 8. It wants full sun and good drainage, then turns drought tolerant once its roots settle in. Deer and rabbits leave it alone, which is why extension offices keep recommending it for low-water gardens. The variety 'Walker's Low' even won Perennial Plant of the Year in 2007 and became a go-to swap for lavender in dry spots.

This guide covers the full picture. You will get clear steps for care and the best varieties to plant. You will learn the right way to shear it for a second wave of bloom. And you will get honest answers on two things: how cats really react and whether the plant can upset their stomachs, plus what the science says about mosquitoes. Let's start with how to plant and grow it.

One wet summer my six-year-old Walker's Low catmint splayed wide open and went bare right through the middle. The plant sat in my zone 5 front border by the kitchen window, and it had looked great for years. I eased back hard on the water, and within a few weeks the mound firmed up and closed back in.

That habit tells you almost everything about catmint care. This is a plant that does its best work when you leave it a little hungry and a little dry. Learning how to grow nepeta comes down to giving it sun, sharp drainage, and a light hand with everything else.

Start with light. Nepeta wants full sun, which means at least 6 hours of direct light each day per NC State Extension. Less than that and the stems stretch, the mound flops, and you get fewer of those lavender-blue flowers. A spot that bakes in the afternoon suits it fine.

Soil is where most people go wrong. Catmint needs well-drained soil, but it is not fussy about type and handles clay, loam, sand, and even shallow rocky ground. What it does not want is rich, heavy soil. Plant it lean, because average to poor soil gives you sturdier stems and a tighter, fuller shape.

Skip the fertilizer too. Heavy feeding pushes soft, floppy growth and actually cuts down on blooms. Once it settles in, nepeta is drought tolerant and shrugs off dry spells that wilt fussier perennials. When watering catmint, soak it deep but space out the drinks, and back off the moment the center starts to open up like mine did.

Catmint is tough on hardiness zones. It lives through cold winters in USDA zones 3 to 8. That covers most of the country. The toughness makes it a top pick for dry, low-water spots. Colorado State Extension calls it a must-have for xeric areas. It even shrugs off road salt and poor soil along walks and drives.

Not all catmint varieties behave the same way in a border. Some stay knee-high and tidy. Others billow out into a 3 ft cloud of lavender-blue. The cultivar you pick decides whether your plant edges a path or anchors the back of the bed, so it pays to choose by the job you want done.

The benchmark is Walker's Low, named the 2007 Perennial Plant of the Year. It grows 1.5 to 2 ft (45 to 60 cm) tall with arching 2 to 3 ft (60 to 90 cm) stems and spreads up to 36 in (90 cm). The big draw is that it is a sterile hybrid. It will not set seed, so it stays compact and never turns weedy the way true catnip can. That one trait is why so many gardeners trust it.

If you garden in a small space, reach for compact catmint like Cat's Pajamas. It tops out near 12 to 14 in and flowers right down to the base, which makes it a clean choice for edging and pots. Want bold scale instead? Six Hills Giant is the tallest common type at 2.5 to 3 ft, perfect for a back-of-border drift. The award run keeps going too, with Cat's Pajamas crowned in 2021 and Cat's Meow in 2025.

Here are the four catmints worth planting first, with the size and habit notes that help you slot each one into the right spot.

Source: commons.wikimedia.org

Walker's Low

• Size: Reaches 1.5 to 2 ft (45 to 60 cm) tall with arching 2 to 3 ft (60 to 90 cm) stems and a spread up to 36 in (90 cm).
• Award: Named the 2007 Perennial Plant of the Year, which made it the benchmark ornamental catmint for sunny borders.
• Flowers: Produces soft lavender-blue flower spikes from early summer into fall above gray-green aromatic foliage.
• Behavior: This cultivar is sterile and will not set seed, so it stays compact and never turns weedy in the garden.
• Hardiness: Reliably perennial in USDA zones 3 to 8 and shrugs off deer, rabbits, and short dry spells once established.
• Best use: Works as a billowing front-of-border filler, a lavender substitute, or an informal low edging along a path.

Source: commons.wikimedia.org

Six Hills Giant

• Size: The tallest common catmint, reaching roughly 2.5 to 3 ft (75 to 90 cm) tall and wide with a billowing habit.
• Flowers: Carries large lavender-blue flower spikes over a long season, making a bold statement in bigger borders.
• Foliage: Shows the same aromatic gray-green leaves as other catmints, giving a soft, cloud-like texture in mass plantings.
• Behavior: Vigorous and full, so it can flop without support or a hard shearing, especially in rich soil or shade.
• Hardiness: Hardy and deer-resistant like its relatives and thrives in full sun with sharp drainage.
• Best use: Best at the back of a border or as a large drift where its size and reach have room to spread out.

Source: commons.wikimedia.org

Cat's Pajamas

• Size: A tidy, compact cultivar reaching about 12 to 14 in (30 to 35 cm) tall, ideal for small spaces and the front edge.
• Award: Named the 2021 Perennial Plant of the Year for its neat habit and heavy, low flowering.
• Flowers: Blooms with deep indigo-blue flowers right down to the base of the plant, giving dense color coverage.
• Foliage: Holds the aromatic gray-green leaves typical of catmint on a rounded, well-mannered mound.
• Behavior: Stays compact and does not flop as easily as taller types, so it needs little maintenance.
• Best use: A strong choice for edging, containers, and tight borders where a larger catmint would overwhelm.

Source: catevolution.com.au

Cat's Meow

• Size: A medium, rounded cultivar reaching about 17 to 20 in (43 to 50 cm) tall and slightly wider for a full look.
• Award: Named the 2025 Perennial Plant of the Year, continuing the strong run of catmint award winners.
• Flowers: Bears clear blue flowers on a dense, uniform dome that holds its shape well through the season.
• Foliage: Carries fine gray-green aromatic leaves that form a clean mound even before the flowers open.
• Behavior: Bred for a tidy, non-flopping habit, so it keeps its shape with minimal shearing.
• Best use: A dependable mid-border or mass-planting choice when you want a uniform, polished look.

By late summer my 'Walker's Low' in the zone 5 front border was a full mound of fresh blue flowers, buzzing with bees again. Three weeks earlier I had taken shears to that same plant and left it a stubby, bald patch of bare stems. I walked past it for days sure I had killed my best perennial. Then the gray-green growth pushed up from the base, and the whole mound rebuilt itself.

That hard haircut is the single most useful thing you can do for this plant. When you shear back catmint after the first flush of bloom fades, you trigger a second wave of flowers that carries the show into late summer. Skip this step and the plant just sits there, spent and floppy, for the rest of the year.

How far should you cut? The honest answer is a range. Colorado State tells you to shear the top growth, UW Extension says half to a third, and Purdue goes as deep as two-thirds. On a healthy, vigorous plant a moderate two-thirds cut works well and gives you the cleanest regrowth. A timid trim gives you a timid response, so don't be shy with the shears.

Once you cut back catmint this hard, the timeline is fast and reliable. Fresh growth appears within a few weeks, and a new flush of lavender-blue flowers follows soon after. The rough, bare look only lasts a short stretch, and the payoff is weeks of fresh color when most of the garden has gone quiet.

Pruning catmint does more than spark a rebloom. The same shear fixes a plant that has gone floppy and splayed open in the middle, a dual benefit that gardener Stacy Ling points to from her own beds. Heavy spring growth tends to flop after the first bloom, and a hard cut pulls the whole mound back into a tidy shape.

You can also reach for the shears between the big cuts. Light deadheading nepeta through the season removes the browning spent flowers and keeps the plant looking neat. But the real second flush comes from the one bold shear, not from picking off a few faded blooms here and there.

The whole catmint vs catnip mix-up starts with the name. Both plants sit in the genus Nepeta, so people lump them together and assume your cat will go wild for either one. That isn't quite how it works in the garden.

The plant cats chase is true catnip, or Nepeta cataria. It packs the most of a compound called nepetalactone. That one chemical drives the rolling, rubbing, and zoned-out cat behavior you've seen in videos. Most ornamental catmints carry far less of it, so they pull cats in much less.

So when people ask do cats like catmint, the honest answer is some do and plenty don't care at all. In my own garden the ornamental clumps barely draw a sniff, while a patch of true catnip turns into a cat hangout by July. If you want fewer cats trampling your border, plant a tidy ornamental type instead of true catnip. The chart below lines the two plants up side by side so you stop confusing them at the nursery.

Now for the worry on every cat owner's mind. Is catmint safe for cats to nibble? For the ornamental types it's low risk, but true catnip can upset some stomachs. NC State Extension is blunt about how the same plant hits each cat differently.

The takeaway is that the reaction depends on the cat and the Nepeta type, not on some fixed rule. One cat melts into a nap while another bounces off the walls, and a few show no reaction at all. Choose your plant with that in mind, and keep an eye on any cat that decides to graze.

It is an August morning at my kitchen window, and the front border in my zone 5 garden is loud. My 'Walker's Low' catmint hums with bumblebees, and they crawl up the blue spikes one after another. A leaf-cutting bee works the far end while two honey bees fight over the same bloom. The plant barely holds still under all that traffic.

Catmint earns its name as a pollinator plant because it draws so many bees. The nectar pulls in mostly long-tongued bees, like honey bees, bumblebees, cuckoo bees, long-horned bees, and leaf-cutting bees. Butterflies and hummingbirds work the spikes too. The fact that catmint attracts bees for weeks on end, especially after you shear it, is what makes it such a steady food source.

The flip side helps just as much. Deer and rabbits leave catmint alone, which is why deer resistant catmint shows up on so many plant lists. The minty leaves taste wrong to them. So rabbit resistant borders stay whole while deer strip the plants nearby. NC State also notes that catmint repels aphids and squash bugs, so it earns a spot near roses and vegetables.

Now for the question people ask most. Does catmint repel mosquitoes? A 2019 study put it to the test. The oil from the plant kept off more than 95% of them. That oil is nepetalactone, and it even beat DEET at the lowest dose. But the win came from the oil, not a plant in your bed, and it lasted only about 2 hours. A catmint plant gives off far too little oil to keep bugs off you, so plant it for the bees and the blooms instead.

The best companion plants for catmint share its love of sun and lean, well-drained soil. That shared need is what keeps a border looking full instead of patchy, since nothing fights for water or shade. So when you decide what to plant with nepeta, start with other tough, sun-loving perennials and let the soft blue haze tie them together.

Color is where catmint earns its keep. Pair its blue mound with hot reds and bright yellows and you get sharp contrast that pops from across the yard. Set it next to soft pinks and purples and you get a gentle cottage garden blend that feels relaxed and a little wild. Both looks work, so pick the mood you want first.

Pairing catmint with roses is the classic move, and for good reason. Roses go leggy and bare at the base, and catmint hides those naked stems behind a billowing skirt of color. The two want the same full sun and drainage, so they live happily in one bed. The aromatic leaves also help push aphids away from your blooms.

Use catmint as a lavender substitute when your lavender keeps dying on you. You get the same gray-green leaves and dusty blue color, but a plant that shrugs off cold, damp, and clay where lavender just sulks. It also holds that color far longer through your season. The pairings below cover edging, containers, and the dry slopes where you need a tough plant.

The nepeta plant asks for very little and gives back a long wave of lavender-blue color all season. The core promise holds up: it stays tough through heat and drought yet still looks soft and full in the bed. A few smart choices at planting time set you up for years of easy blooms.

The actions that matter are simple. Plant your catmint in full sun and lean, well-drained soil, then water it sparingly once the roots take hold. The one task that pays off most is the shear back after the first flush of flowers fade. Cut the top growth by one-third to two-thirds and a fresh show of blue returns within a few weeks. This single step keeps the plant neat and pushes a second flush deep into late summer.

The selling points speak for themselves. This perennial is hardy from zones 3 to 8, it shrugs off deer and rabbits, and it pulls in bees and butterflies from morning until dusk. I planted a row of catmint in my own border, right where two batches of lavender had rotted out. It sailed through the same hot, dry summer without a hitch. A deer resistant plant that blooms for months and needs almost no fuss is a rare find.

When choosing a variety, reach for a sterile cultivar like 'Walker's Low' and you get all that color with none of the spread. It sets no seed and stays well-behaved in the bed. Picture your own border next summer, hazed over with that soft blue glow while the bees work each spike. That view is closer than you think, and it starts the day you tuck the first plant into the ground.