Quick note: for those of you who get notified of my new posts via email, I just found out I’m limited in the number of emails I can send per week so you won’t be seeing the email notifications until I can work something out. Or pay up to allow the vendor to send more.

More to come. My apologies for the mix-up.

For today, I give you a mass of Obedient plant or Physostegia virginiana ‘Vivid’.

I came to acquire these through “what the hell, I’ll try it” and ordered three online. A decade later and I think I’ve cornered the market in the Northeast U.S. They spread underground through rhizomes and fill an empty spot so, so quickly. I’ve spent many a fall evening ripping out a few by hand, relocating them to where they can fill another void.

Rinse and repeat.

I’ve had no issues controlling them. If they wander where I don’t want them to wander, I pull them out with ease. And your factoid for the day: They are referred to as “obedient” since you can bend their stems in any way your heart desires and they’ll remain that way.

Yes, I do it on the regular. For fun.

My only issue to date: I use them as a groundcover in the front of the garden beds but their legs aren’t always so handsome. Then can yellow a bit as you can see in the pic above. Because of that, my mind has determined that I need a shorter groundcover in front of this groundcover to hide the discoloring. But it has to be tall enough to actually do just that.

The design game never ends.

And we’d never have it any other way.