Nepeta ‘Junior Walker’

Nepeta ‘Junior Walker’ is one of my very favorite drought tolerant perennials – and that’s high praise indeed! Its aromatic, blue-gray foliage provides a beautiful contrast for soft-looking, blue-violet flowers. Plants generally begin blooming in early May, and will bloom well into fall if you shear them back after their spring bloom.

‘Junior Walker’ reaches about 16″ tall by 30″ tall at maturity. It does best in full sun and well-drained soil, and combines well with other drought tolerant perennials. It makes a nice accent in a summer garden; creating a nice cool place for your eyes to rest amidst the other hot-colored blooms of summer.

Nepetas are also known as Catmints, and their foliage smells like mint with a warm hint of camphor. This aroma also serves another purpose in the garden: while it’s really pleasant to humans, deer don’t like the smell and tend to avoid the plants.

However, the most notable feature of ‘Junior Walker’ – and of all Nepetas – is that they are absolute magnets for pollinators. Here at the nursery, it’s not uncommon to find our Nepetas covered with a combination of butterflies, skippers, honeybees, bumblebees, and tiny solitary native bees. If you have really limited room for pollinator plants in your garden, put ‘Junior Walker’ at the top of your list!

We also regularly carry these other varieties of Nepeta:

Nepeta ‘Purple Haze’– ‘Purple Haze’ is the shortest of the Nepetas we grow. They share the same abundant violet-blue flowers and aromatic foliage of ‘Junior Walker’, but plants only get about 4″ tall at maturity. They’re a great addition at the front of a perennial bed – or plant them to spill over a rock wall.

Nepeta ‘Walker’s Low’– ‘Walker’s Low is the tallest Nepeta of the group. Plants get to 24″ to 30″ tall, by about 36″ wide. Like ‘Junior Walker’, it has a gentle mounding shape and combines well with other sun-loving, drought tolerant perennials like Salvias, Agastaches, Rudbeckias, and Gauras.