How to grow lemon balms

Lemon balm is an upright, bushy perennial in the mint family, grown for the lemon scent its leaves release at a touch and the flavor they bring to tea, salads, and vinegars. It forms a full clump ten inches to two feet tall in its first season, spreading wider each year once established in full sun to part shade and soil that drains but does not dry out completely. Unlike its mint relatives, it stays in the same patch rather than creeping by underground stems, easy to mistake for a well-behaved herb-bed plant in its first year.

The hardest part of growing lemon balm is what happens after that first year, once the plant flowers and sets seed. University of Illinois Extension explains that lemon balm spreads not through its roots but through the sheer volume of viable seed its flowers produce, and left alone, that seed carries the plant well beyond its original bed. A gardener who lets the flowering stalks stand through summer, the way one would with a perennial grown for its bloom, ends up weeding lemon balm seedlings out of neighboring beds the next spring. Utah State University Extension recommends cutting the flower stalks back before they set seed.