Mint — I Wish Someone Had Told Me

Mint is aromatic, a lively addition to tea or other concoction and the bane of a garden if grown without restriction.

“You have mint in your garden?  You may as well pick it up (the garden) and move it somewhere else.”  This was the response of one gardener upon hearing my most recent mint encounter.

Another was simply, “I wish someone had told me.”

This calls into question the moral obligation of plant sellers and nursery women.  Should folks in the business of selling garden and landscape plants be charged with disclosing the incriminating behavior of those they are profiting from?  That without a fool-proof-container-like-straight-jacket for plants such as mint (and a whole list of others) your garden will be overrun and your time consumed with its removal.

There may have been just one mint carefully lodged into the soil of the above garden.  It’s mastery at multiplying due to it’s persistent rooting system.  Allowing it to travel great distances, pulling apart raised bed boards (as shown), overrunning its neighbors and wreaking havoc.  From the beds it extends its hold, creeping unseen.  Creating a network far beyond anyone’s imagination.  If pulled gently, coaxing the soil as you go, roots greater than 5 ft in length are the trophy’s.