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How to Propagate Yarrow

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) is one of my favorite perennials. It has feathery green foliage and produces clusters of bright flowers that bloom from late spring into fall. Pollinators love the flowers, too—I have yarrow in my roundup of plants that attract beneficial insects in the garden!

I also love it because it’s low-maintenance, and once it is established in the ground, I don’t have to water it. It also does great in our poor clay-based rocky soil. So why not grow more of it?! It’s easy to grow from stem cuttings, so let’s talk through how to do it.

Step 1: Take a good cutting

The first step to a good propagation is taking a good cutting. Yarrow has a clumping growth habit that forms bushy mounds. It reproduces via a deep root system of rhizomes that creates offshoots of baby yarrow plants.

This growth pattern makes it super easy to propagate, and these babies are some of the best candidates for propagation! So let’s talk about how to take a good cutting.

When you take a cutting, make sure you get part of the stem. If you just take a leaf with a petiole (which is the part of the leaf that connects it to the plant’s stem), it won’t grow. Below are examples—the first photo on the left doesn’t have a stem. This is a bad cutting. The one on the right is a good cutting that will root.

When you take a stem cutting, make sure it is a few inches long and will still have 2-4 ferny leaves after you remove the bottom-most set of leaves. Removing the bottom-most set of leaves exposes the growth points; this is where new roots will grow from.

Because these plants spread through rhizomes underground, you may also be able to pull up a baby plant and get the start of a rhizome that will really help with root development.

yarrow cutting

Step 2: Plant in soil

Once you have a good cutting, you’ll want to plant it in well-draining soil in a pot. If you want to use some rooting hormone, feel free. I used some for these propagations because it was a bit later in the season. I decided that using rooting hormone and a seedling heat mat would probably speed up rooting.

I also plant a few cuttings in the same pot to save space. Some of them probably won’t be successful, so if you plant more than one, you really increase your chances of getting a good propagation! Keep the soil moist for several weeks to encourage root growth.

planting yarrow propagations

Step 3: Monitor root growth

After several weeks, I decided it was time to check for root development. I dumped my small pot of cuttings out and carefully brushed the soil off of each of the cuttings. Out of the four cuttings, two has great root growth already (see below). The other two didn’t have any root growth yet.

I potted the two that had good root growth up separately into different pots so they would have plenty of room to grow. You could also probably pop these in the ground when they look like this and they’ll take. Like I said, they are hardy plants.

And that’s that—it’s super easy to root yarrow stem cuttings so you can fill your garden with this hardy pollinator-friendly plant! 🙂

roots on yarrow propagations
woman holding two yarrow propagations

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collage that says learn how to propagate yarrow plants with pictures of the process

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