Agastache rugosa After Eight

The 'Agastache rugosa 'After Eight' is a recent and delicious variety, with dark foliage revealing a scent and flavour of anise, with hints of chocolate mint. This perennial forms a beautiful leafy clump that is adorned throughout the summer with a generous flowering in upright spikes, filled with small blue-violet flowers with bracts and red stems. Robust and undemanding, this plant is a boon for slightly wild areas, to which it undoubtedly brings a touch of lushness, combined with a very natural beauty. It will thrive in sunny beds, in well-drained soil, not too dry.

The Agastache rugosa, sometimes called Korean Mint or Rough Agastache, is a plant of the mint family, related to salvias, catmints, and other thymes. This herbaceous perennial, native to China and Japan, was until recently underexploited by horticulturists for the production of cultivars bringing something new. This oversight has been rectified with the recent creation of the hybrid variety 'After Eight', remarkably floriferous and fragrant. The plant forms an upright clump, with branching stems, reaching a height of 40 to 60 cm (16 to 24in) and a similar width, depending on the growing conditions, giving it a more bushy habit than other species. It produces leaves, triangular in shape and 8 cm (3in) long, slightly sticky, with dentate edges, dark green, which grow along the length of the angular and red floral stems. When crushed, they release a scent of anise, mixed with mint and cocoa. The flowering period extends from June-July to September, in the form of colourful, thin and dense upright inflorescences. Each small tubular blue-violet flower is surrounded by red-purple bracts. This particularly nectar-rich and nectariferous flowering attracts a large number of bees and butterflies.

Easy to grow, Agastache rugosa 'After Eight' thrives in sunny beds with a slightly wild appearance. In hot regions, it should never lack water during flowering. A carefree perennial, it adds height and substance to beds composed of grasses (stipas, eragrostis, pennisetums), herbaceous salvias, large daisies, echinaceas, goldenrods, and asters. It also pairs very well with yellow or orange shrubby potentillas, for example.

The flowers and highly fragrant leaves of the Rough Agastache are edible and delicious in salads or fish dishes.