A number of years ago, one of my mom’s neighbors shared a perennial from her garden. It had lovely lilac-colored flowers and bloomed for many weeks in the summer. The neighbor didn’t know what it was so my mom and I dragged out a flower encyclopedia and perused the internet to begin the process of elimination. Many giggles later, we figured out it was an Obedient Plant (Physostegia virginiana).
The Obedient Plant got its name from a little quirk. You can bend and move the individual flowers in any direction and they will stay that way. I must admit, it’s kind of addictive. This peculiarity is what finally allowed us to positively identify my mom’s new plant.
Unfortunately, the obedience stops with the name. Obedient Plants are a bit of a nuisance in the garden. They love to spread, and like bee balms they tend to die out in the middle as they wander further and further away from where they were originally planted.
I really wanted to grow the beautiful, snapdragon-like flowers in my yard too, but when you look up “control freak” in the dictionary my name is actually listed, and I wouldn’t have been able to sleep at night knowing there was a devious plant outside making plans to take over the garden.
Thankfully I wasn’t completely out of luck. There’s a variety of Obedient Plant called ‘Miss Manners’. It grows in a nice clump. While many Obedient Plants can grow 3 to 4 feet tall, ‘Miss Manners’ tops out at 24 to 30 inches. The flowers are white—not my favorite—but the plants bloom like crazy and are well-behaved:
Obedient plants thrive in sun or part-shade and prefer to be watered regularly.
This week I was excited to learn that there is a new Obedient Plant available. It’s a cousin to ‘Miss Manners’ and retains the same control-freak-approved habits. ‘Pink Manners’ is already on my spring shopping list. The flowers are pale pink on sturdy, 36-inch stems that don’t need staking.