Imagine coming home to a soothing garden with soft colors, delicate blossoms with no immediate maintenance needs. Soft swaths of Pink Cotton lamb’s ear (Stachys lavandulifolia) provide that experience. Its unusual flowers look like pink cotton, as its name describes. Despite its frothy appearance, it’s tough, dependable and requires little fussing.  

This plant is native to the Caucasus Mountains, from Turkey to Iraq, and rock gardeners have used Pink Cotton for years. In full to part sun, Pink Cotton is perfect to grow where rock berms interface with the flat ground, but can be the plant that transitions from turf, or a garden bed, to sidewalks or gravel pathways. Its appearance is calming, suggesting gentle motion in contrast to static rocks or concrete. Pink Cotton happily greets garden guests as it gently reaches into pathways or melds multiple gardens. 

In height, it’s not tall enough to block pop-up irrigation heads from occasionally watering the garden. Pink Cotton only needs to be watered once per week for 12 weeks in late spring through the summer. Water use can be reduced to about 2 gallons per square foot per year using this beautiful perennial and other Plant Select plants in mass. Plant Select gardens contain flowers in various shapes—spikes, balls, discs and trumpets—and now fuzz.  

Welcome to the soft, soothing world of Pink Cotton.  Read the full article in the Sept/Oct issue of Colorado Green. Contributed by Ross Shrigley & Bev Shaw for Plant Select®.