I know you posted this some time ago, but I wondered if you had any more lamb's ears? I bought some a while ago and promptly dried them out, but they're one of the most beautiful, friendly sort of plants I've ever seen. I have a couple types of Euphorbia (mottled spurge and firesticks) as well as a Senecio (blue chalk sticks) that I can offer in trade if you've anything left. Thank you.

Melissa, I'm glad that the blog is informative and enjoyable for you. I like Adonis Blue a lot. It is front and center in my garden since it is a smaller size (5x5) than some of the other varieties. It's easy to find companions for it as the color goes with just about any other color...yellow, apricot, salmon, carmine red, pink, lavender. For screening purposes, we use Royal Red. The royal purple blooms look great with yellow blooms or other purple/lavender color schemes. Those get pretty big (8x8 or larger), but we use them to screen our parking area from view. Out of necessity, I cut those back by half size when a storm almost blew them out of the ground. They had already finished the first bloom. This was the first time that I'd done a severe pruning in mid-summer. The results are fantastic as the bushes are full of fresh blooms for the Monarch butterflies! Now, I plan to prune all of my buddleia at the end of June next year so that the Monarchs will have more blooms in August/September. For a pretty pink/rose, I love Pink Delight (8x8). It looks great with purple smoke tree and monarda Blue Stocking. I have several with colocasia esculenta and purple palace heuchera (placed on the shady side of the buddleia). Coneflowers such as 'Ruby Star' would also look great beside it, but I don't yet have enough of those to place them with the buddleia. Cameron

My bottom leaves always yellow and brown. I just rip them out whenever I remember. (The leaves are browning because of all the rain.) Mine is in part shade also and it took a number of years for it to take off. In fact this year, it's getting divided since it's going to swallow my Elijah Blue fescue. Give your plant some time, it sounds like it's doing fine. Stachys actually doesn't like to be too wet, but as long as your top growth is fine, I wouldn't worry. Here's a picture of mine, way back in 2005: Here's the same garden now: It's a bit hard to see, but the Stachys is now bumping right against the Siberian Iris.

yes it works real well as i use it, another one you can try is campanula blood red or angle breath. DICK