A real lady in the garden - Alchemilla Mollis (Bedding Plants in General)

Member Name: Flindy

Product:	Bedding Plants in General
Date:	19/03/01 (148 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Long flowering season, useful and lovely to look at

Disadvantages: Likes to spread itself about a bit

Lady’s Mantle or to give the botanical name, Alchemilla Mollis is a beautiful plant to have in the garden, it is a hardy perennial.

I personally think that it is underrated by a lot of people, maybe because it is a plant that is mainly green, even when in flower. It gets overlooked in favour of the showy summer annuals like Geraniums, Salvias and Petunias, to name but a few! Of course these showy plants have a prominent place in our summer garden, but allow some room for Alchemilla to add a touch of the the informal here and there.

If you should try it in your garden; you will be rewarded with a plant with wonderful leaves, light green and almost pleated, round in shape and downy. In summer if you go out fairly early in the morning before the sun gets hot (some chance!) the leaves will have drops of dew on them, which look like drops of silver in the sunlight, it is as though the dew is drawn to them.

The flowers are tiny and star shaped, and are held in clusters at the top of intricate heads, they are a cool limey yellow colour. The flowering time is from June through to August, and the height of the plant is about 15 inches (sorry I never did go metric).

Alchemillas like a sunny or partially shaded site in well drained but not too dry soil. You can provide twigs or sticks for support, or if you grow the plant at the edge of a pathway you can let it spill over onto the edges of the path, which looks very attractive. You could grow Alchemilla on a bank too, and let the flower stems fall forward without support.

I love to see the plant growing at the front of the border under roses, it associates well with many other plants, and its frothy appearance softens the outlines of the path or the border.
It is a flower arrangers dream, and is available to you throughout the summer if you have several well-established plants in the garden.


The plant has a habit of self-seeding, and you will find m
any new little Alchemilla plants growing the following spring! I deal with this problem by cutting off the flower stems just before they turn to seed at the end of the flowering period. There are some that I miss, but I just pull up the seedlings as they appear if I do not want them to grow.

You can divide the larger clumps in the early autumn, and re plant in other spots, or, just wait for it to self-seed and transplant the seedlings in spring. Alchemilla is thought to have got its name because allegedly it played a part in alchemy, the art of turning base metals into gold! What a wonderful thought…. or fantasy!

I have been asked about the price, and to be honest I have only purchased this plant once! Which demonstrates it's ability to self seed :-) I would think around the £3 mark at an average garden centre, but if you know someone who already has a plant I am sure they will supply you with a seedling ;-)

Happy gardening...

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