Calamintha nepeta Marvelette Blue - Lesser Calamint

Calamintha nepeta 'Marvelette Blue' is a small variety selected and awarded for its more colourful flowering, with intense violet-blue colour, as well as for its more compact, ball-shaped habit. It is a small, highly aromatic, highly floriferous, and highly drought-resistant perennial plant. Its small, villous leaves have a powerful scent of mint and bitumen. Its flowering, with great delicacy, is nectariferous and melliferous, and can be admired from summer to autumn. In the garden, the small Calament 'Marvelette Blue' thrives in sunny rockeries and borders. It is a plant perfectly adapted to the Mediterranean region. It can also be grown in pots like other aromatic plants.

Calamintha nepeta 'Marvelette Blue' was obtained in 2014 and awarded the Gold Medal at Fleuroselect in 2016. This cultivar is derived from Calamintha nepeta, the false-nepeta calament, which belongs to the large family of Lamiaceae, like mints, marjorams, thymes, salvias, and other lavenders. It is a spontaneous botanical species in southern Europe, North Africa, and Asia Minor. It is a rhizomatous plant with a dense stump. Its vegetation sometimes persists in winter in the Mediterranean region, but disappears in colder regions.

The small Calamintha 'Marvelette Blue' is capable of flowering just 12 weeks after sowing. This perennial plant forms a low, neat cushion in spring. The thin, square-sectioned stems elongate and branch out rapidly, creating a small, round clump of about 30-35 cm (12-14in) in all directions. The leaves are very small, villous, slightly dentate, dark greenish-grey, and remarkably aromatic: with the slightest touch, they exude a characteristic scent, both sweet, powerful, and very refreshing. Flowering begins in June-July and continues until October, depending on the climate. It is abundant and charming: the numerous small flowers, slightly larger than those of the species, borne in inflorescences, bloom for a long period. Their colour is vivid, a blue tending towards mauve.

Calamintha nepeta 'Marvelette Blue' is an ideal plant in dry Mediterranean gardens, but it adapts easily further north if planted in well-drained soil, not too wet in winter. It is suitable for arid situations, as well as poor, limestone, and rocky soils. It works wonders in rockeries, on slopes, along paths or borders, and between the paving stones of a Japanese step. It can also be welcomed in patio planters. Its misty blue flowering is an excellent complement to many garden flowers, especially red and fuchsia pink shrub salvias, Caryopteris, Perovskia, Gaura, and Asters. Lastly, this aromatic plant can be used dried, in small quantities, in many Corsican and Italian culinary specialties, or as infusions.