It’s seldom seen but is a pleasant garden curiosity.
There is an extremely drought-tolerant ground cover, cold hardy down to zero degrees, that is known as lavender cotton . It is seldom seen but is a pleasant garden curiosity. It is distinguished by grey foliage with a cottony consistency and scads of small yellow spherical flowers that will remind you of those on acacia trees.
Some gardeners elect to forego flowering of lavender cotton when they decide to utilize it as a low-growing hedge, a garden design element for which it is better suited than any other plant. Santolina hedges can also be shaped into letters for spelling out words. A number of years ago, on a slope at the side of the road near the entrance to Jerusalem, I saw “Bruchim Habaim” spelled out in Hebrew letters fashioned from Santolina hedges.
Kept under a foot in height and regularly sheared and boxed, Santolina foliage makes it a wonderful formal border to a bed of colorful ornamental sages . Sages bloom in red, pink, lavender, blue, and purple and any of these colors stand out brilliantly when surrounded by silvery Santolina. Speaking of sages, “The New Book of Salvias: Sages for Every Garden” is an excellent volume to give as a Valentine’s Day gift for the serious gardener in your life.
Santolina, native to western and central Europe from Portugal to Yugoslavia, is derived from two Latin words: sanctus linum, which means holy flax. Its holiness comes from the supposed curative properties of its flowers and foliage. I say “supposed” because this plant has not proven to be as medicinally effective as it was thought to be at one time. When the properties of almost any plant are researched, a large number of medicinal uses are invariably listed.
So why is the vaunted healing capacity of so many plants, as described in literature going back to medieval and ancient times, no longer recognized? I believe there are two reasons for this. First, when the only medicine available to people came from plants, there was more familiarity with how to utilize them – and the processes involved in extracting their beneficial ingredients – for curative purposes.
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