Yarrow can come in a bright yellow variety, but it can also be red or pink.
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Planting, Growing, and Caring for Yarrow Plants
Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) is a native North American plant that is popular with pollinators and practically carefree, making it perfect for borders, ground covers, and open meadows. Here’s how to grow yarrow flowers in your garden!
About Yarrow
Sold as a hardy and versatile perennial, yarrow has showy flower heads composed of many tiny, tightly-packed flowers rising above clusters of ferny foliage. The flowers may be yellow, red, pink, or any shade in between. Yarrow is pest-resistant, drought-resistant, attracts butterflies, and is excellent for cutting and drying.
The plant is also an aromatic herb that has many healing properties! See this wonderful article, Yarrow and Its Medicinal Uses.
Planting
When to Plant Yarrow
- Plant in the spring or early summer after the danger of frost has passed. See local frost dates.
- If you plant yarrow from tip cuttings, plant them in spring or early summer.
Choosing a Preparing a Planting Site
- Plant in an area that receives full sun to encourage compact growth and many flowers. In partial sun or shade, yarrow tends to grow leggy.
- Yarrow performs best in well-drained soil. It thrives in hot, dry conditions; it will not tolerate constantly wet soil. Loamy soil is recommended, but yarrow can also be grown in clay soil as long as it does not always stay saturated with water.
- Use a garden fork or tiller to loosen the soil in your garden to about 12 to 15 inches deep, then mix in a 2- to 4-inch layer of compost.
- If you grow yarrow in soil that is too rich, the plants may require staking due to overenthusiastic growth. To keep it from growing too tall, choose a site with average to poor soil and supplement it with some compost to give the plants a good start.
How to Plant Yarrow
- Space the plants 1 to 2 feet apart.
- They are quick to establish and spread, though some species, like Achillea millefolium, are extra-aggressive growers, so be careful when choosing your plants. Most kinds grow to be about 2 to 4 feet tall.
Growing
How to Grow Yarrow
- Add a thin layer of compost around your plants each spring to keep them fed.
- Yarrow is very drought tolerant, but if you receive less than 1 inch of rain a week in the summer, remember to water your plants to keep them looking their best.
- Cut off “deadhead” flowers when they start to fade in mid-summer; this encourages most varieties to produce another round of flowers.
- Divide yarrow plants every 3 to 5 years to sustain vigorous, healthy plants. Lift the clumps in early spring or fall and remove any dead stems from the center of the clump. You can replant the divisions elsewhere in the garden or share with a friend!
Catherine Boeckmann
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If they’re in small seed-starting pods, you could carefully transplant them to larger peat pots for the rest of the indoor period. Alternatively, and depending on the weather, you could start hardening them off outdoors during the next two weeks, then plant them in the ground, keeping a close eye on the weather forecast. Keep them covered at night until the danger of a hard frost has passed; they can survive a light frost if they’re sufficiently hardened off. Here’s some more info about hardening off seedlings.
I have wild yarrow growing in the sunny parts of my property. This is MT where it can plummet to Way below zero and gets down to zero every winter. Usually there is a decent layer of snow. Also my cousin in MN has it in her flower beds; she can get extended periods of -20 to -30f. Her gardens border a grove of hardwood trees so they get some random mulch but still… yarrow can take the cold!
We recently moved into a new housing subdivision in Davis, California where Yarrow plants have been used throughout the landscaping. The plants looked nice for a month or two, turned brown, and have been that way since Easter. Is this normal?
Do you see any bugs or holes in the leaves? If not, some varieties of yarrow hold their color better than others. After bloom, the yarrow will turn brown. You can try cutting them down to see if you’ll get a new round of flowers.
Can you use dried seed head of yarrow to feed birds
Yarrow, at least I think its yarrow, grows wild in North CA. It has white flowers.
Summer Pastel Yarrows "Achillea Millefolium" blooming time? I live in Alabama (zone 7b) and just this year finally learned the name of this flower that I have loved for years!! I went out and found a nursery that could get it from a local grower and I purchased it. I got an entire tray of them and planted an entire bed of summer pastel yarrows with day lilies (that were already established in that bed and I had ready in a bed planner that said the two went well with each other. It's in full sun, well drained soil, the yarrows are being used as the boarding plants in this bed. The fern like foliage is beautiful and very healthy the only issue is I HAVE NO BLOOMS AT ALL AND ITS JULY 28th. So when so I expect to see blooms? The day lilies are on there 3rd blooming cycle (this has never happened, we are having an an extended blooming cycle because weather is favorable) and I can't even get the summer pastel yarrows "Achillea millefolium" to bloom at all?!
Hi Dusty,
It sounds like the cultural conditions are ideal for your plants, so I wonder if the nursery staff cut the plants back a bit before you bought them. That is a common practice in nurseries and greenhouses—it keeps plants from getting rangy. That could have delayed bloom time, but since they sound nice and healthy, my guess is you will see blooms in two or three weeks that should—with a little deadheading—last through the fall. Fingers crossed!
I still have no blooms on my yarrors- I've ask the nursery and they did not top them prior to me buying them. We have monitored the amount of water they have received more closely and cut back watering them greatly. The fern part is thriving! Daylillies are rebloom here in Alabam after the initial plant bloomed and its fans foliage died and grew back! Because we have had so much rain and the temperature has been elevated for several weeks! HELP I'm At A COMPLETE LOSS, wish I could submit a picture for review??? Forgive any typos when entering text in the comment box an ad was stuck over it so I am typing blindly :/
I left an update on my Summer Pastal Yarrows and really could use some advice. I'd love to send in a picture of the fern foliage- seeing how I've never grown/planted Yarrows before maybe there is a trick I do not know... I have 10 plants in a bed all by themselves right in front of my porch with absolutely no flowers:(
