There Goes the Neighborhood

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For gardeners who aren’t afraid of its wandering ways, lemon balm ­offers a rich history of medi­cinal use, a wealth of culinary options, and a ­welcome mat for bumblebees.

FIVE YEARS AGO, my husband and I bought our first home in Boulder, Colorado, from a Master ­Gardener who had tended its grounds for some thirty years. A renter with little time to garden had lived there for the past two years, and the yard was a disaster. Armed with the barest knowledge of gardening but a lot of determination, I set out to dig the front yard, once a terraced and Xeriscaped masterpiece (or so my new neighbors told me), out from under the layers of leaves and weeds.

Neighbors often stopped by to watch the progress, and some went home happily bearing divisions of the yarrow, tarragon, lavender, and costmary that I was uncovering. But when I tried to give away starts of the huge patch of lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) thriving in the dappled shade of the daunting ­silver maple, I found no takers.

“Lemon balm,” they would say, scornfully. “You put it in, you’ll never get rid of it.”

“But smell,” I would urge, crinkling the heart-shaped, downy leaves so that their citrusy, slightly minty, honeyed fragrance wafted sweetly into the air. “How could you ever have too much of this stuff?”

Still no takers. Never mind that its tiny, nectar-laden flowers are a magnet for bees (lemon balm’s generic name, ­Melissa, is Greek for “bee”) or that it ­possesses the rare ability to thrive in dry shade. Apparently, lemon balm has ­developed a bad reputation, largely for those same reasons. (An Internet search turned up several references to the plant’s seeming desire to “take over the Northwest.”)

One hardy perennial

I’ll admit that after two years of ­neglect, my own lemon balm was a bit rangy and weedy looking. And I’m ­pretty certain that my predecessor had not planned for such a large patch of the clump-forming perennial (which was managing to hold its own against the mint) when laying out her garden. Like any child worth her salt, lemon balm will spread its wings when left unchecked. Self-seeding and spreading roots can double the size of a patch in a year. Still, with a bit of attention, lemon balm can be shaped into an ­attractive garden element, its medium green leaves and bushy, mounding habit contrasting handsomely with ­darker, deeper green foliage. Golden-leaved cultivars illuminate shady spots.