Botanical name: Achillea millefolium
Folk names: woundwort, carpenter’s weed

Type: Perennial

Wildlife: Nectar for bees, hoverflies, beetles and butterflies. Provides shelter for other beneficial insects such as spiders, beetles, lacewings and parasitic wasps. Lacewings lay their eggs on the plants and will munch on the aphids, so an important and helpful part of the food web!

Flowers: June to November

Decorative merit: White or pinkish, flat-topped flowerheads in clusters on fragrant, feathery foliage. Up to 50cm high. Spreads by rhizomes to form a mat.  

Where: Sun or part-shade. Wilder lawn patches (tolerates mowing) and mini meadows where it can spread, or as a clump in a border.

Folklore: Regarded as a powerful herb since the Anglo-Saxon times and used in divination rituals and as a charm against bad luck and illness, as well as for staunching wounds (called carpenter’s grass in places). But also believed to have caused nosebleeds or at least sneezing if a leaf was put up the nose. Greek warrior-hero Achilles was said to have used yarrow to purge and heal wounds made by iron weapons. Used as a charm against bad luck and illness.

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