Packed pot planted

If you asked me what plant I had the most "extras" of, it may take me a minute to think about it, but the answer would probably be Agastache foeniculum. Besides having it growing in half a dozen places on purpose, it's also popping up everywhere -- including the mulch around my neighbor's tree.

I also have several pots of the wonderful-smelling stuff, from small nursery pots containing single plants to big planters that hold a veritable carpet of the plants. This one for example. Last year it grew a "lawn" of Agastache seedlings and I never did anything about it. They formed a nice-looking pot that I kept next to the driveway all summer.

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I'm not sure how many of those plants returned this year, but a large number of them did and I decided to put the plants to better use.

This currently-empty (well, almost empty) bed is where they'll go:

This bed was filled with Cleome, purple fountain grass, and elephant ears last year, with a patch of Agastache foeniculum right in the middle. It appears that about half of the Agastache came back, so there's room for more. 

Where can I find some more? Oh yeah...

I started  by splitting the rootball in half:

That wasn't enough though, so I went quarters on it:

and dug four holes:

There is a little difference between the potting mix these lived in last year and the soil that they'll call home now:

As I do whenever I dig planting holes in the heavy clay soil, I removed the stuff from the hole and dumped it into my holding pile -- when it has the right moisture content making it nice and crumbly and not sticky as it is right now, that's when I'll add compost to it and use it.

For now I just took the loose soil from that pile, mixed in compost, and used that to fill around the plants. I did have to cut the bottoms of the rootballs off too, since they were way too tall for the holes I dug and digging deeper into pure clay wasn't really an option:

Much too tall for the hole I dug.

So in they went:

While I was at it I decided to take a chance and plant the purple fountain grass again:

I really liked this grass here last year, and I've been nursing these indoors all winter. Even though they've been outdoors for a few weeks now because of our warm weather, they would probably take some damage if we have a late freeze but I'm pretty sure they'd survive. So into the ground they go! This way I don't need to put them into larger pots.

That's probably the worst photo I've taken all year, but I just couldn't get a view of the bed that looked interesting and showed the new plants. This one is better:

I've noticed that I have at least one more of these jam-packed pots of Agastache, maybe two. So I can find a couple more areas of my garden (or somebody else's) to fill with these fragrant bee magnets.

Ah, the best thing about planting fragrant plants is you get covered in their scent. Mmmm, a combination of mint and licorice. Sweet if you taste the leaves too, or maybe that's just my imagination.

I'm looking forward to seeing this bed filled in, swarming with bees!

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