Tansy, an old world medicinal herb that came to naturalize in North America, features a Boston Fern-like habit, both in terms of leaf appearance and the tightness of the foliage structure in mature plants. The plants, at maturity, maintain a height of approximately 2 to 3 feet until the flower stalks begin to emerge, which often rise to between 5 and 7 feet!

Each mature Tansy plant on the farm produces at least a half dozen flower stalks, and quite often ten or more, calling and reaching out to late season pollinators looking for increasingly rare pollen opportunities.

During last years early frost autumn, some Tansy was still providing a food source right up until the frost, and in ‘normal’ years here (where we’ve frosted in mid-October), it’s not been uncommon to have some blooms still standing into early October.

Tansy’s benefits extend beyond it’s value in the pollinator garden. The leaves also are effectively used to halt intrusive activity in most North American species of ants (ie. invading your cubbard) and is almost found to be mosquitoes, fleas and many types of biting flies. On the farm, the leaves have proved very effective at deterring carpenter ants.

Care: Tansy is an incredibly low care plant in many regards. As long as it gets some direct light, and is grown in a draining soil, it will be quite happy. On the farm, we’ve had Tansy self sow on the edge of ditches, mounds and embankments, the woodland edge and numerous other locations. And it’s grown well in both heavy clay soil and humus rich soil.

Here-in is where most of the care takes place: How much Tansy do you want? In areas we want it to spread, it does all of the work. Otherwise, it may require weeding once a year.

Those who grow a singular Golden Button plant probably won’t experiencing self sowing, as the herb often fails to produce viable seed without a cross pollinator. You can also cut back the flower heads before they seed out, to prevent self sowing.

This goes hand in hand with the only other particular task of attending to Tansy. At the end of the season, or the following early spring, the dried flower stalks should be removed for optimum visual impact of the plant.