Jan–MarApr–JunJul–SepOct–Dec
Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-594
Water Mint
Mentha aquatica
Water Mint is the wettest-loving of the mints, happy in standing water and grown along pond margins, bog gardens and stream edges rather than in an ordinary bed. Its fragrance is a strong, pungent peppermint that most people find too intense for cooking, so it is used more as a tea and condiment than a kitchen herb. It flowers in late summer and early autumn, a season when few other wet-edge plants are blooming, making it a strong late pollinator draw. Every fragment of rhizome roots and it runs hard through saturated ground, so it is sited where that spread is wanted - a swale bottom or pond shelf - and simply stops on its own where the soil dries out.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 5–9
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Moist · Wet
Vertical layer
Herbaceous- Soil pH
- 6–7.5
- Plant type
- Perennial
- Mature height
- 2–3.3 ft
- Mature spread
- 3.3 ft
- Plant spacing
- 3–3.9 ft
- Root type
- Rhizome
- Spread pattern
- Root
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The deeper layer
Plan what comes next.
- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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