Astilbe
Astilbe
Feathery plumes for damp shade — miss a watering in a hot week and it tells you, crisply, at the leaf edges.
- Type
- Flower · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Pink
- Sunlight
- Partial shade; keep it out of hot, dry, sunny corners.
- Watering
- Needs steady moisture; never let the soil dry out.
- Feeding
- A spring feed and a generous moisture-holding mulch.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- June
- Pruning
- Leave the plumes standing for winter, then cut back in late autumn.
- Mar–Mar Bud Break
- Mar–Jun Spring Growth
- Jun–Sep Flowering
- Sep–Oct Growing
- Oct–Dec Leaf Fall
- Jan–Mar Leaf Fall
- Plant spacing
- 17.7 in
- In-row spacing
- 17.7 in
- Between rows
- 19.7 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Clumping rhizomes
- Working depth
- 6–16 in
- Can reach
- 24 in down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 18 in–2 ft across, about 1–1.5× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 10 in of soil
The clump widens a little each year from a shallow rhizome that likes to sit at or just under the surface. When the middle goes bare and woody, lift the whole thing, keep the young outer pieces and throw the centre away.
A shallow rhizome that must never dry out: an astilbe that goes dry once browns at the edges and does not recover that season. It is a plant for damp ground rather than a plant that likes water.
The habit is Astilbe’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Beneficial nematodes Steinernema & Heterorhabditis spp.Hunts Vine weevil
Microscopic worms watered onto damp soil that hunt down soil-dwelling grubs and release a bacterium that kills them within days. Timing is the whole thing: warm, damp soil and a small target grub, which means late summer for most of what they are used against.
- Frogs & toads AnuraHunts Vine weevil
A resident toad works the beds every night for slugs, cutworms, and weevils. Recruit them with water — even a sunken basin pond — plus damp shade and an upturned-pot toad house; skip the slug pellets that poison their prey.
- Ground beetle CarabidaeHunts Vine weevil
Fast, glossy night hunters that patrol the soil surface for slugs, cutworms, and root-fly larvae. Give them daytime cover — thick perennial edges, stepping stones, a log — and skip the tillage that wrecks their burrows.
- Hedgehog Erinaceus europaeusHunts Vine weevil
A European animal, and worth saying so plainly: there are no hedgehogs in North America, and the ally that does the same night shift here is the toad, the opossum or the ground beetle. Where they do occur, cut a gap in the fence and skip the pellets.
Hostas, Ferns, Heuchera, Hydrangea
Green-leaved flowers, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com