'White Nancy'
Spotted Deadnettle
This patch of 'White Nancy' Lamium, or Spotted Dead Nettle, is a cultivar of Lamium maculatum which is native of Europe & North America.
Our Dead Nettle (or Deadnettle) lives underneath a Red-twig Dogwood between fence & rainbarrel. It prefers part shade but will also survive in deep shade. It requires almost no attention to thrive, just so long as it never experiences complete dryness (& it can even bounce back from drought-caused deathly appearance when water is restored).
It does need rich loose soil & if the ground is compacted, it will not grow to best advantage. If over time the soil does become compacted & poorly draining, poking a pointy rod into the soil in several places & giving it a good jiggle will loosen it up without having to dig up the Dead Nettle.
The late spring & summer blossoms are pure white. The flowers are strongest in June but can be present May through July, with a smaller rebloom in August. Pleasant though the flowers are, the leaves are even showier. The green & white leaves are almost coleus-like but vastly more suited to the outdoors. They look airbrushed with silver paint.What I hadn't predicted but which became evident after this patch of 'White Nancy' was established is that such white-blooming varieties have weakened impact of their short spikes of flowers, merely because blooms do not stand out against white & green leaves. In the above July (2002) photo there's a receme of flowers shown a bit off-center, but you'll have to look awfully closely to see them. The second photo is from June (2004) & despite that there is a large white bloom right in the center of the photo, it is all too obvioius how almost disappear against the silvery-white foliage.
There are other cultivars with flowers that are pink, dark pink, rose-red, purple, or lavender. These contrast more boldly with silver or white-patterned leaves. Lamiums with yellow & green leaves rather than white & green do provide more contrast for white flowers. So we've added 'Anne Greenaway' with variegated yellow foliage & lavender flowers, & 'Pink Pewter' with pink blooms over the silvered leaves.
Yet in 'White Nancy's' favor are the quality of its self-seeding offspring, as not all varieties remain so true to the culivar as they spread & reseed through the years. Plus it has one of the finest silvered leaf pattern of so many leaf-types that exist. It's beauty & ease of cultivating gained 'White Nancy' the Award of Garden Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society. This prestigeous award, bestowed in 1993, has led to 'White Nancy' becoming the most widely available cultivar.
Spotted Dead Nettle stands only six or eight inches tall, but spreads into a complete groundcover spring through autumn. In the warmer south, it is semi-evergreen through winter, though it has to be protected from heat or it'll trade a rather scruffy winter presence for die-back in summer. On Puget Sound it is its nicest for three seasons; this particular patch died to the ground in winter 2001/2, but a lot of it was still bright & pretty during winter 2002/3. Even if it should die to the ground in late autumn, it always returns early spring, being cold-hardy to a high degree.
In this July photo at top you can also see nearby the blue flowers of a 'Purple Leaf' Corydalis. Corydalis is supposed to become quiescent in summer, & a larger specimen in another shade garden did stop blooming in July & died back in August. The one under the Redtwig, however, remains lively & blooming even during uncommonly warm summers. Maybe it's the luck of the sheltered location, but the variety 'Purple Leaf' is perhaps really less effected by summer heat.