{"id":4676,"date":"2026-05-08T11:10:36","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T19:10:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=4676"},"modified":"2026-05-08T11:10:36","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T19:10:36","slug":"lambs-in-the-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/lambs-in-the-garden\/","title":{"rendered":"Lambs in the Garden"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I fall in love with some plants easily. Others take longer\u2014sometimes a lot longer. That was the case with Stachys byzantina, known to its friends as lambs\u2019 ears. It is not as if lambs\u2019 ears wasn\u2019t on my radar. When my daughter was small, she saw a bed of the plants, touched their soft, fuzzy leaves and was completely smitten. \u201cI want to fall asleep in a bed of lambs\u2019 ears,\u201d she said, and I am pretty sure that she still feels that way as an adult.
\n\tNow, many years after that love-at-first-sight experience, I have several pots of lambs\u2019 ears on my front porch awaiting installation in a new garden area. They are there at my daughter\u2019s suggestion, but I have also come to value them as an ornamental plant.
\n\tPerennial lambs\u2019 ears have acquired a variety of ovine nicknames over the years, including lambs\u2019 lugs, lambs\u2019 tails, and lambs\u2019 tongues. The \u201clamb\u201d part has to do with the softness of the gray-green leaves, which are covered with tiny hairs. If you are of a fanciful turn of mind, the shape of the roughly ovoid leaves might also remind you of either ears or tongues. The \u201cbyzantina\u201d part of the Latin name refers to the species\u2019 area of origin, which includes present day Turkey, Armenia and Iran.
\n\tYou have probably seen lambs\u2019 ears, even if you didn\u2019t know what to call them. The plants grow nine and 18 inches tall, with a maximum spread of about 18 inches. The wooly leaves appear as rosettes and spread by way of underground rhizomes, leading some gardeners to use them as ground covers. In spring, lambs\u2019 ears may produce flower spikes of tiny pinkish-purple flowers, but the spikes are most frequently described as \u201cinsignificant\u201d. As with hostas, many people simply cut off the flower spikes, viewing them as superfluous to the more aesthetically pleasing leaves.
\n\tThe hirsute nature and grey-green color of the leaves gives a clue to one of the species\u2019 major virtues\u2014drought tolerance. Silvery grey foliage reflects the harsh rays of the sun and the tiny hairs provide further protection. Reference sources often categorize lambs\u2019 ears as \u201cxeric\u201d plants, suitable for landscapes where moisture is at a premium.
\n\tStachys byzantina was introduced in Europe in 1782 and made its way across the Atlantic sometime after that. It is an old garden favorite, and its toughness has probably led to it becoming a \u201cpassalong plant\u201d that gardeners bestow on each other. Hungry deer and rabbits avoid it, and the plants can survive dry rocky soil, proximity to toxic black walnut roots, shallow soil, and urban situations.
\n\tUnlike genera such as echinacea that are now home to hundreds of varieties, Stachys byzantina has not been monkeyed with by breeders. The most popular variety is \u2018Helen von Stein\u2019, which is sometimes also sold as \u2018Big Ears\u2019. \u2018Fuzzy Wuzzy\u2019 has the same winning qualities as other byzantina varieties but seems to grow a bit taller. \u2018Silver Carpet\u2019, on the other hand, is smaller, at six to eight inches tall, making it even more suitable as a low ground cover.
\n\tStachys is a member of the large and diverse mint family. It is related to Stachys officinalis, also known as the herb betony. One of the major differences between the two stachys species is that officinalis bears showier flower spikes and is more often grown as a floriferous, drought-tolerant ornamental. Merchandisers capitalize on that trait and advertise officinalis plants for their attractiveness to pollinators and hummingbirds.
\n\tIf you decide to invite these botanical lambs into your garden, site them in a spot that receives plentiful sunshine. The plants are tolerant of just about anything except shade and poor drainage. I plan to amend my sticky, moisture-retentive clay soil with sand or gravel to give my plants a congenial environment. The initial investment in drainage material will be more than offset by the fact that I will not have to invest in additional deer repellent to keep my lambs\u2019 ears intact through the growing season.
\n\tPasture your lambs in dry gardens, alongside lavenders, santolina, and sages. Use them as ground covers or edgings. Given congenial situations, they will spread themselves, but they are also eminently reasonable about being divided.
\n\tMy young daughter had the right idea all along, and now my garden will no longer have to tolerate the silence of the lambs. Those lambs will be capering about and bleating up a horticultural storm as soon as I can get them in the ground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I fall in love with some plants easily. Others take longer\u2014sometimes a lot longer. That was the case with Stachys byzantina, known to its friends as lambs\u2019 ears. It is not as if lambs\u2019 ears wasn\u2019t on my radar. When my daughter was small, she saw a bed of the plants, touched their soft, fuzzy … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3,1],"tags":[3289,1429,3286,3283,3285,3288,3284,3287],"class_list":["post-4676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","category-uncategorized","tag-big-ears","tag-drought-tolerant-plants","tag-lambs-lugs","tag-lambs-ears","tag-lambs-tongus","tag-silvery-plants","tag-stachys-byzantina","tag-xeric-plants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4676"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4678,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4676\/revisions\/4678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}