Spotted Bee Balm (botanical name Monarda punctata) loves sun, heat, and soil on the dry side. It’s thriving in one of the toughest spots in my garden: the corner where the driveway meets the curb. Cars, kids, dogs, and delivery folk run over it every so often, but it keeps on blooming. The flowers look like fantasy pagodas with tiny pineapples on top.
I started with three plants in the fall of 2021. By the next fall, it had started to spread even though one of the original plants had been run over too many times to live. By 2024, I have a dozen or more plants, enough to move to other areas of Sun Curve and to give away.
Wonderful Pollinator and Wildlife Plant
Bees adore Bee Balm, as you might expect, going around and around the flower stalks to lick nectar out of each flower. Butterflies, green lacewings, wasps, and birds visits too. Gold Finches eat bee balm seeds in the fall.
Spotted Bee Balm is one of my favorite native plants. Learn more about Spotted Bee Balm from NCSU’s plant database.
