PKponder, Yes - good eye, that is Flame acanthus on the left. They were cut back hard in early spring because they were sprawling so badly and are looking their best ever this year. Roselee, I also didn't expect the trimmed ones would bloom first. Will just have to keep experimenting since my assumptions are so poor. When the tall ones start flopping in full bloom, I'm going to cut them back to see how (if?) they recover blooms within the season. I am going to put phlox trimming on the garden calendar at the end of April. This north side of a fence can be a tricky spot in our long growing season; some plants get leggy and/or start leaning for the sun while in the fence's heavy shade during the early and late months when the Sun is still low. It's another guess, but suspect this could be one factor that causes our 'John Fanick' phlox to get leggier and flop more than others I've seen.

Any possibility it's some kind of campanula? They self-sow with abandon in my garden. The rosettes of campanula persicifolia look similar to your pic, though c.p. have pointed rather than rounded leaves.

Garden phlox cultivars differ notably in things like colour and height but also on when they routinely come into bloom. We currently have several dozen different garden phlox cultivars, usually with more than one plant of the same cultivar. Location within our garden is certainly a major influence on when plants of a particular cultivar come into bloom (notably how sunny the particular location is). Still as said there are some systematic differences in bloom time between cultivars. I could not rank our cultivars by bloom time, but occasionally earlier versus later-bloom time seems quite evident. 'Glamour Girl' (in a number of locations in our garden) comes into bloom after most of our other cultivars. Again, in all of this, "which and when" is complicated by location. Our garden phlox which blooms the latest is certainly 'Nora Leigh' (relatively nondescript bloom but variegated foliage). The foliage of many of these plants still looks fine here in October. I've been thinking that the strong mildew resistance of this cultivar might be related to it's late bloom time. I'd say that the way to have garden phlox in bloom for a long time includes having many different cultivars and healthy plants in good growing conditions.

Yes, Obedient plant is the common name for Physostegia virginiana. It is named obedient plant because the flowers can be moved on the stem and stay in that position. The species can be a fairly aggressive spreader and most cultivars have that tendency also. Give it plenty of space.