Plant · P-130

Anise Hyssop

Agastache foeniculum

Anise hyssop is a genuine dual-purpose herb: the leaves and flowers taste like sweet anise and work raw, cooked, or steeped for tea, and the flower spikes are some of the best bee and pollinator plants around, drawing native bees, bumblebees, honeybees, butterflies and hummingbirds - especially valuable because it blooms in the hardest month of the year for nectar in a hot climate. Its one hard requirement is drainage: on heavy or poorly draining soil the roots and crown rot rather than merely struggle, so it needs a slope, berm or raised bed. Its anise scent keeps deer off, though only itself, not its neighbors, and it is easy to keep going from seed, self-sowing and dividing readily.