Plant Profile: July

Astrantia
By Trips Secretary, Elizabeth Rees

'Astrantias are amongst the easiest and most useful plants for gardens with a little shade, or in cooler and moist areas. They are long flowering perennial and are popular as a cut flower. They come in every shade from off white through to pink and dark reds and can continue flowering to November if conditions are right. 

They are native to hilly and mountainous areas from the Pyrenees to the Caucasus and are generally found in woodland edge or meadow habitats with moist and fertile soil. 

The most familiar is Astrantia Major, which reaches about 1m high with a 50cm spread. Astrantia Maxima has soft pink flowerheads with more rounded foliage and is a stronger spreader than Astrantia Major, but it does require good light and moist conditions. 

The plants are members of the Umbellifer family to which cow parsley belongs, and the 'flowers' are in fact flower clusters, tightly packed and enclosed within a ruff of bracts which are the main source of colour.

Astrantias reproduce well from seed in gardens with moist soils and cooler summers, but can also be propagated through division in winter or spring. They fit easily into any space and are ideal partners for tall campanulas and hardy geraniums and can be interplanted with deciduous shrubs. They are suitable for high density planting and combined with earlier flowering aquilegia and late flowering asters, months of flowers can be achieved for lightly shaded areas.'