PLANTING SNEEZEWORT

Sneezewort  Achillea Ptarmica

I have not seen this plant growing in the wild very much.  In fact; until recently, I had only ever collected the one little road side chunk of it from near Holsworthy in North Devon.  The one little chunk quickly spread and seeded all over the garden and most prevalently; in the lawn.  Until recently, had had 2 Geese, who kept my grass cut short for me & they didn't care much for Sneezewort, so it flourished.

It is a member of the Yarrow family, Achillia.  It grows about 40cm high and starts flowering in July.

In the picture below, you can see that I am digging a patch of my lawn, thick with Sneezewort.  I had previously gone over it with the mower, to cut off all the flowering stems, I had then given it a few weeks to bush out a bit, so that it was nice and vigorous and ready to be transferred to it's new home.

It is necessary to do this within a few days of rain, so the ground is nice and soft and easy to squish into cracks in walls, and also plants hate being transplanted in dry soil.

I separate these turfs into 8cm square chunks of ground, packed with the tangled roots, so that each bit has it's own little bit of root ball and then the roots will hopefully get as little disturbance as possible. 

I suppose that the concept for today, is really; dig it up in chunks and stuff it into walls.

I took the Bicycle today, as I knew I would be having to stop allot.  I planted a bit in suitable walls, about every few hundred meters or so in the walls along the ungraized roads, which go across the tops of the moor.

Often these walls are filled or part filled with earth.  When I plant something in a wall like these ones; I like to ensure that there is some soil in there, which the root ball of what I've put in is touching.  Then it feels like I have connected it to the Earth.

 It was very satisfying to be able to cover so much ground and get so much done in one day.  If only Wild Daffodils and Trees were so easy.

I have so many Sneezeworts in the garden, I don't have to go out looking for them, they take very easily, spread quickly, will grow where little else will grow, like on the tops of stone walls and they are stunning, when they flower, which they do for at least 4 months.

One thing that dose concern me is that all these thousands of plants, just came from this one Holsworthy chunk.  There couldn't have been very many individual plants in that chunk, so they must be getting fairly inbred by now, I would have thought.  But they appear to be very healthy.  It is possible that someone might have some in a near by garden, or that there is already some here, that I don't yet know about.

This year I did find a little bit near Lydford, which will expand the gene pool a tiny bit, but Sneezewort defiantly likes it on Dartmoor.  It will be very nice to have a fairly unusual plant so common up here.