Lamb's Ear
Stachys byzantina
A soft, silvery groundcover with thick, velvety leaves that children love to touch, lovely edging a border or path, and deer and rabbits leave it alone. Give it sun, sharp drainage and no overhead water: humid summers and wet leaves rot it. Snip off the flower stems to keep it tidy; it can spread aggressively.
- Mature size
- 5 in × 1 ft
- 0.1 × 0.4 m, tall × wide
- Hardiness
- Zones 4a–8b
- USDA
- Sun
- Full sun
- Water
- Dry to medium
Lamb's Ear at its mature size
A mature Lamb's Ear grows to about 5 in tall and 1 ft wide.
Drawn to scale beside a 5 ft 9 in person. With VeraScape, you see it at this size in your own yard.
Typical mature size, unpruned. Sources: Missouri Botanical Garden.
Through the year
What Lamb's Ear looks like month by month in a typical zone 6–7 garden.
Winter · Dec–Mar
Flattened, bedraggled silver leaves.
In leaf · Apr–May, Aug–Nov
Dense low mat of woolly silver leaves.
In flower · Jun–Jul
The silver mat with upright woolly spikes of small purple-pink flowers.
Photos
Growing Lamb's Ear
- Grows well in
- The Northeast, the Midwest, the Plains and Mountain West, the Pacific Northwest, and California.
- Good for
- Groundcover, drought tolerant, and deer resistant
- Leaves
- Dies back in winter
- Native to
- Turkey, Armenia, and Iran
Spacing
VeraScape spaces plants so their grown canopies just touch. For Lamb's Ear, that’s about 1 ft apart, center to center.
Place a row in your own yard and VeraScape spaces them at their mature width, so you can see whether they’ll crowd the walk.
See Lamb's Ear in your yard before you dig
Visualize it at its true size, alongside the rest of your design.