About this variety
Warm buttery-yellow semi-double saucers on slender wiry stems, held well clear of a neat mound of soft scalloped leaves so they appear to float. It has been in British gardens since the 1920s and holds an RHS Award of Garden Merit.
Yellow in a perennial is usually harsh and slightly acidic. This one is not. It is enamelled and faintly amber, and it is at its best backlit, when low sun comes through the petals and the whole plant lights up, so site it where the evening sun can get behind it. It is also that rare thing, a decorative perennial genuinely happy on heavy moist ground. Most cottage favourites want drainage; geum will take clay and keep going.
The flowering season is long, May through August, but only with consistent deadheading. Let it set seed and it stops by early July. The semi-evergreen foliage gets tatty by late winter, so shear it off in early spring before the new growth comes, and lift and divide the clumps every three or four years or the flowering thins.
