Yay for Yarrow!

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Yay for Yarrow!

It was another frigid day outside with no activity out in the gardens. We actually closed the Parker Education Center due to the cold and correspond our closure to the Janesville School District doing the same. Many of us came in to work including some volunteers as well. While I continued bouncing between "desk tasks" like seed ordering, event preparations and catalog perusal, we had some additional activity in the Horticulture Center. Pat and Larry H. were in for the entire morning processing lights for storage. The guys put a huge dent in our post Holiday Lights Show (HLS) processing. Maury came in after running some errands and Dick H. stopped by to size up more repairs on one of our snowblowers. Dr. Gredler came in to work on wrapping up cords this afternoon and we also saw Bev F., Mary W. and a couple of others today. There were lots of deliveries so I'm glad I was over at the building.

This blog is dedicated to the versatile perennial known as yarrow (Achillea). For many years, the variety 'Moonshine' (seen above) was the standard and is still a great, full sun, drought tolerant perennial. There are currently many new and relatively new varieties that have expanded not only the color palette but the heights of these selections. There are more compact forms as well as those with earlier blooming and/or a longer period of summer blooming. We have many selections of yarrow out in the gardens including the standard Achillea millefolium and hybrids that include this as a parent. However, the sneezewort (Achillea ptarmica) has also done well for us and can be seen further below. Any of our yarrows that look scraggly in late summer are sheared to the ground to encourage fresh growth and occasionally we'll see some reblooming. Yarrow does expand as a perennial but is easy to divide and share. I don't thinks this "tough-as-nails" perennial will ever be ubiquitous and it's nice to see such a wide range of colors too!