PlantFiles: Lady's Mantle
Alchemilla xanthochlora

last year was my 1st year gardening. lady's mantle was one of my few total failures. i bought it as a plant, and it failed away slowly through the summer. it never flowered at all, and the leaves went too, some by bugs, some just withered away...

Zone 7b - Atlanta - I have tried on three occasions to grow this plant - I even raised some from seed. They looked lovely when I planted them but they just dwindled away. I do pretty well with almost everything else.

A wonderful, carefree plant that I have in the rocks above our pond, planted around 1999. I give it no care - other than to clear off the dead leaves in early spring and harvest the flowers to dry in July and August.

It requires moist soil, and this area is inundated with springs and runoff from rains, it requires no fertilizer and has grown quite well from the little 6" potted plant that I started with - in fact, it has sown freely and I have several other small plants started just out of camera shot and I'm happy to have them. The beautiful velvety green leaves are gorgeous after a rain as the drops tend to "puddle" and glisten on top of them.

In July the petite lime green/yellowish flower stalks are held above the leaves and later fall so that it looks like a halo around the perimeter of the leaves. This signals for me that it's time to harvest them, before they start to fade to a yellow/brown. The flowers may be bundled and air dryed and look similar to "stardust" baby's breath, only greenish-yellow. They provide a delicate filler, and I use them particularly in wreaths. The leaves may also be harvested and used in arrangements. They should be dried between pieces of newspaper for several weeks - I usually weight the paper down with a book to help them dry flatter. They dry to a velvety grayish-green and add a nice depth to arrangements.

Growing hint: If purchased as seed, it must be sown in the autumn to germinate in the spring. Once established it seeds freely.

A few years ago I ordered Lady"s Mantle from a flower catalog. In the catalog it showed that this plant will grow in my zone 8b. I planted three plants and they soon died. Later I read in another catalog that they would grow only to zone 7. If anyone has grown them in zone 8b, I would like to know if they where able to grow them. Marie

It takes 2+ years to flower from seed.