plant of the moment

Lamium

Lamium

A nettle by any other name. Plant this in your garden and you're taking the country look a bit too far

Buy A Pot of lamium and it will look oddly familiar. Country walks, overgrown hedgerows, sudden searing pain - yes, it's a nettle, but an emasculated, domesticated, non-stinging kind of nettle. It's meant to be used as ground cover, but larger varieties are garden thugs, muscling in on smaller, more delicate plants and submerging them. Flowers can be of various muted shades - yellow, mauve and white. Varieties such as "White Nancy" and "Beacon Silver" have quite attractive variegated leaves. But, no matter how pretty the foliage, they still look like nettles, which is probably taking country-style a little too far. You may have to restrain visiting nature experts from shrieking and rushing for protective gear to extract and destroy them.