Here is mine. It seems to like 1/2day sun, morning til noon.Before it landed there it was in mostly all day sun and seemed to do okay there too.

I believe it's only effective if the leaves are crushed to release the oils & rubbed on your skin/clothes...

I've never been able to find enough plants to do any kind of experimenting. For some reason, there's only ever 1 or 2, if any. If they're at a BBS, they're WAY overpriced with silly signage that implies your mosquito problems will be over if you buy one, and I haven't seen them in years that way. They probably got a lot of complaints from itchy people. If they'd just sell 'scented Pelargoniums' not calling them Geraniums (so people don't complain about the sparse/missing flowers,) that would be honest and I believe sell well. The 'mosquito-repellent' and 'Geranium' labels were sadly misleading I thought.

I have read up on this quite a few times to see if anyone ever gives a conflicting report, but despite what SO MANY pinterest/facebook shares suggest, the 'official' word is that, much as Carol said, all the insect repelling plants have to be crushed and rubbed on to be effective. So it doesn't matter how many planters of citronella, lemongrass or other 'miracle insect repelling' plants you have on your patio, if you don't roll in it, it won't do anything.

Yes, my point was that it's difficult and/or cost prohibitive to amass enough plant material to do that.

I have a massive lemon eucalyptus near my deck and after it rains it smells like citronella and it does nothing for mosquitoes.