Lamb's Ears
Stachys lanata
also called lamb’s ears
Woolly silver leaves grown for the foliage rather than the flower — undone by a wet winter far sooner than a cold one.
- Type
- Flower · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Silver and gray
- Flower color
- Purple and violet
- Sunlight
- Full sun suits it best, though light shade is tolerated.
- Watering
- Needs little water once established; give it sparingly, and always at the base rather than over the leaves.
- Feeding
- No feed required.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- June
- Pruning
- Pull off tatty leaves and finished flower spikes whenever they appear.
- Overwintering
- Semi-evergreen and hardy enough; it's the winter wet that kills it, not the cold.
- Mar–Jun Spring Growth
- Jun–Aug Flowering
- Aug–Nov Growing
- Nov–Dec Leaf Fall
- Jan–Mar Leaf Fall
- Plant spacing
- 23.6 in
- In-row spacing
- 23.6 in
- Between rows
- 2 ft 6 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Shallow roots, spreading on surface runners
- Working depth
- 6–12 in
- Can reach
- 18 in down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 24 in–3 ft across, about 1–1.5× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 8 in of soil
The roots themselves stay shallow and near the crown; the spreading is done above ground by runners that root wherever they touch. The colony walks outwards while the parent plants age out, so keep the young rooted runners and replace the old ones every few years.
The habit is Lamb's Ears’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Root & crown rot Crown rot in wet winter soils, and worse on heavy clay
- Leaf rot through a long wet spell
- Bare patches opening up in the center of old clumps
Flowers, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com