Lamb’s Ear Stachys byzantina

Lamb’s Ears: A Field Guide

With fuzzy silver-green leaves and a habit of growing in dense clumps, a patch of Lamb’s Ear looks like a velvet cloak thrown over a garden bed. 

Perennial Stachys byzantina is lovely in the front of the border, as an edging plant, or as a low, dense ground cover around the base of shrubs. In summer, each mound of Lamb’s Ear will send up spiky purple flowers. Cut it back in late fall to prevent the fuzzy leaves from rotting.

Lamb’s Ear will fill in gaps and bare spaces in the front of a garden bed and will hide the leafless skeletons of roses. Its silvery leaves “provide a calming cohesion and harmony in a garden with too many flower colors or a hodgepodge garden bed,” writes our contributor Kier Holmes, adding that “the evergreen leaves help keep a garden visually intact during sparse winters.”