This delightfully fragrant flower comes in two shades, from white to deep lilac. Although it is a perennial, it is best treated as biennial and raised afresh from seed each year. Liking a limey well-drained soil and some sun, it will also tolerant poor, hungry soils. It is a very easy plant and one worth seeking out. Other cottage garden flowers that will grace any town or city garden are the many forms of verbascums.
Many new forms are now available, ranging from pure white, to the deepest golden yellow and apricot.
Again, these will tolerant poor soils if need be. Most are tall and very striking grouped in the back of border. One essential with verbascums, if you want to see flowers the following season, you must be prompt in removing the spent flower head before the seeds form. Amongst my many hellebores I grow drifts of snowdrops, winter aconites and also pulmonarias, which are now just beginning to flower. The pulmonarias or lungworts make excellent ground cover in a fertile, moist soil, in either full or part shade.