Brer:

We 'grow' ours wild on the back of our fence. I never water them and in the event they grow too tall I just cut the blooms back. They kind of grow like pretty weeds here. When I grew them in my flower beds where they received water and fertilizer I had some trouble with flopping. Once I moved them someplace harsh and began negletcing them totally the straightened right up!

Having said that I did stake my Achillea 'Moonshine' this weekend. It also receives very little in the way of food or water but is just so vigorous I had to do something to make it behave a bit more without cutting it back. I used a peony support.

Hope this helps.

Kate

I used a peony cage to keep my Cherise Queen looking groomed. (I agree, the soil in that bed is too rich for yarrow, causing the flop)
You need to place the cage before the plant starts to droop, though, for a more natural look. The outer, smaller stalks will hide the ring.

I've got to second (or I guess third!) the soil suggestion. I have mine in an area where a dead oak fell, on the edge of a wooded area. I never amended the soil, just dug out some space amongst the roots and put the plants in, and they do wonderfully there.

I also discovered I have some white yarrow growing along the edge of the road, literally growing out into the street, in with a jungle of weeds. Very, very poor, rocky, dry, sandy soil there.After they bloom I will add them to the ones in my garden, since I have no white ones in the garden.

:)
Dee

I have three different yarrows in three different flower beds, none of them in a rich soil, and none of them are on the drip irrigation system, though two of the beds receive some overspray from the lawn sprinklers. The ones that receive the most water are definitely the tallest. We have some very strong winds here which is what has caused a couple of mine to flop. I haven't started staking them yet, though I think the peony hoop idea is a good one. My method for dealing with it for now is to ignore it, unless it is laying on top of another plant, then I just prune off the offending stems.

I have Fireland, Paprika, Cerise Queen, Appleblossom, & Moonshine yarrow. The only one that needs staking is Moonshine which puts its flowers up on long stems high above the foliage and is much taller (at least 5 ft tall) than the rest. I use a fairly low 3-legged hoop with cross pieces as the staking device for each plant of Moonshine. These are fairly inexpensive and seem to do the trick, despite their shortness, letting the plants lean some, still look natural, and the hoops are nearly invisible.

I plant most of my other varieties of yarrow in closely packed beds with things like daylilies, phlox, hardy lilies, knautia, guara, catmint, etc. which seem to hold them upright.

This is Fireland or Paprika (I forget which) after it has started fading in color. I'm not sure if the catmint is holding up some of the yarrow or vice versa.

The hostas in the background are not as close as the picture make it seem. The hostas (Minuteman on the left edge, Wide Brim with the creamier edges & 3 others) get enough shade from the crabapple tree and the yarrows are nearer the front edge of the bed, waving slightly above the daylilies, but also underplanted with some more small hostas, heucheras, & heucherellas that don't mind a bit of sun, and some protection from the sun provided by the other plants. I repeat these groupings of sun & shade plants throughout this bed, matching the yarrow colors to the various colors of the daylilies, heucheras, and hostas. The soil is moisture retentive amended clay, but the multiple & heavy layered planting seems to suck up the moisture and nutrients enough to let things like yarrow do their thing as well, without any need for staking.
{{gwi:247364}}

Absolutely beautiful, Leslie 197!

Thanks, all.