Phlomis

Phlomis is a beautiful perennial with subtle yellow flowers and neat green leaves. It's useful for leaving uncut through winter - the stalks and seed-heads are quite sculptural.

Phlomis Seed Heads

My perennials reference book describes the yellow flowers as 'whorls', and the leaves as ’oval wrinkley felted green’.

Yellow Flowering Phlomis

Useful too are the seedlings which it produces - easy to relocate or to rip out if they’re growing where they're not needed. You will find quite a few of its offspring, though, so keep a look out.

The yellow flowers first appear in early summer, and they always take me by surprise. On minute Phlomis is low to the ground, and the next minute the flower stalks are knee-high and the soft buttery yellow ’whorls’ are there.

Sculptural Seed-heads

Some gardeners may not like the abundance of brown when the seed-heads form, but I quite like this as an alternative colour for the late summer garden. When I get too annoyed with the seed-heads they’re easily cut off. The remaining leaf clumps stay tidy all winter.

When yellow Phlomis is flowering it becomes a subtle blender in a mixed border - in fact you might have to concentrate really hard to see the patch of Phlomis in the following border photograph! But it’s definitely there, filling up the middle of the garden (in front of the Calamagrostis grass)

Yellow Phlomis in the Early Summer Garden

Phlomis is a modest hard working perennial, and definitely worth a place in the garden.