From The Gardens

One of the very first perennials that I grew was the ubiquitous Lamb’s Ears, Stachys byzantina,  formerly S. lanata. An old house, really a mansion, near our home was being torn down to make way for a new school.  The day before the bulldozers arrived, a few neighbors and I took spades and buckets in hand and rescued some of the remaining plants in the garden.  I was such a novice, all I took were the lambs ears and a few ferns.  Since they were unexplicably growing next to each other in that garden I planted them next to each other in my own garden.   Both plants were placed under some old cedars in our tiny city yard, simply because I knew that ferns needed shade so apparently the lambs ears did also!

The ferns florished, but, of course, the lamb’s ears grew sparse, ragged and rangey.  In my ignorance I didn’t realize that they were not doing well.  I thought that was the way they were supposed to look. They struggled there for years, always looking limp and frankly quite unattractive.  Several years later we moved to the country where there was a big sunny yard and very little shade.  My failing little lamb’s ears made the move with us and were shoved in the ground at the south-east corner of our new home,  and were promptly forgotten.

We were busy that summer planting vegetables and clearing brush and trees from the perimiter of the property, but I did put a few herbs in that sunny corner of the house.  Curly parsley, Petiolatum crispum, landed next to the lamb’s ears. What a happy accident that was!  That was my introduction to the importance of contrasting textures in the garden

The fuzzy, silver mats of the stachys, by now thick and near-white growing in full sun, planted next to the bright green curly mound of parsley were striking and attractive all summer, through fall, and, really, until snow fell.

The stachys has since spread, and seeded itself, and been divided countless times.

Like all silver hairy leaved plants, stachys byzantine thrives in full sun and a well drained location.   Indeed those hairs that make the plants look so white aid in transpiration to help the plant rid itself of excess moisture.  If planted in a soggy spot in the garden, stachys runs the risk of rot, simply because the plant is not able to remove excess moisture fast enough.  I usually cut off the flowering stalks just as the fuzzy buds form at their tips, because I prefer to retain the low mat of foliage and I don’t then have to deal with any unwanted seedlings.  They dry beautifully, retaining their felty pliability

Several cultivars have found their way into commerce over the years, among them “Big Ears” or “Helene von Stein” as it is sometimes listed.  Larger leaves, fewer flowering stalks, but the same felted appearance make this a valuable perennial,. Although it does not sparkle as much in the garden as does the species, it is more tolerant of heat and humidity. The variety “Silver Carpet” spreads its wooly leaves without sending up any flowering stems, and the cultivar “Primrose Heron” forms a nice tight clump of slightly larger leaves with a chartreuse cast to them.  All of the above plants are valuable border and edging plants, making a wonderful non-green plateau between grass or path and the garden proper.

Since gardening now has become my avocation, I have learned that the genus stachys contains several other very garden worthy species.  None of these cousins resemble lamb’s ears in any obvious way, shape or form.