Achillea millefolium Peggy Sue

The 'Peggy Sue' yarrow is a semi-evergreen perennial that blooms from July to September in adorable flower heads with a deep red colour and pronounced white centres. The yarrow, easy to grow, is suitable for both amateur and beginner gardeners. This cultivar forms a particularly compact upright clump with aromatic, greyish-green, and deeply cut leaves, giving it a light and feathery silhouette. Yarrows can be planted in any sunny and well-drained soil. It is an ideal perennial for borders, resistant to the summer heat and drought, and suitable for a dry garden. With its spreading habit, it also works well as a ground cover, gradually forming beautiful flowering carpets as it spreads with its rhizomes.

Yarrow is a stoloniferous perennial plant native to Europe and Asia Minor that belongs to the Aster family. Attractive to pollinators, especially beetles, yarrow forms a clump of characteristic leaves resembling those of certain ferns. The 'Peggy Sue' variety reaches a height of 60 cm with a spread of 60 cm. The stem is channelled and villous, and the aromatic foliage is finely dissected. The flower head is a slightly domed and flattened corymb held well above the foliage. It is composed of numerous small flower heads. When dried, the flowers remain decorative long after summer and can also be dried outdoors in the shade to create dry bouquets. By regularly removing faded flower heads, the flowering is highly recurrent. It prefers moist, light, and rich soils but tolerates limestone soils, dry soils in summer, and less sunny exposures.

A hardy, perennial plant that is undemanding, 'Peggy Sue' yarrow integrates well into a dry meadow with golden grasses and the airy blooms of scabiosa and mulleins. Easy to grow and drought-tolerant, it can cover the base of bushes or the edge of a sunny bed. In a bright bed, plant them with red, orange, and yellow flowers and the dark foliage of 'Durban' and 'Semaphore' cannas, punctuated by the deep blue of Delphinium Pacific Black Knight or 'Black and Blue' salvias. Pair them with the slender silhouettes of kniphofias, rusty foxgloves, and Buenos Aires verbenas, enhancing the horizontality of their umbels.

The plant has recognised medicinal properties: it is hemostatic, the leaves promote healing, and the flowers have a stimulating, tonic, and fever-reducing effect. The young shoots, with a bitter taste, are harvested in spring and consumed sparingly in salads, sauces, or as sandwich fillings. In some regions, it is used to flavour beers. Yarrow tea is effective against oily skin.

Yarrow owes its name to the Greek hero Achilles, who is said to have discovered its medicinal properties by using it to heal soldiers' wounds during the Trojan War.