Grow Ammobium for Fresh and Dried Flowers and Wreaths

Mixed bouquet with light, medium, and dark pink daisies with little white Ammobium flowers sticking up and out of the bouquet a little. — A bouquet of painted daisies in light and medium pink and red with striped carnations and white Ammobium flowers as filler in the bouquet.

Ammobium, Winged Everlasting (Ammobium elatum)

Home » Grow Ammobium for Fresh and Dried Bouquets

Ammobium is a little-known flower. It’s tough and easy to grow providing long stems to work in many bouquets, tall and short. It can be used as a fresh bouquet filler or as a dried flower in dried bouquets and in wreaths, adding its starry white papery flowers for lightness and texture.

It’s a tender perennial, which means it’s a perennial in USDA zones 9-10, and will likely die in winters in colder zones. If you live in colder zones you’ll treat it like an annual. I live in Zone 9a, it snows and we have plenty of hard frosts. My plants have been under snow for a 3-4 weeks at a time and survive well. Any year you may have some plants make it through the winter.

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It comes from Australia.

Ammobium plants and flowers

The plant is a low-growing basal cluster of light green foliage with a whitish underside. The stems reach up to about 2 ft. tall with some short branches.

The flowers are bright white, papery bracts for petals (like strayflowers), with sunny yellow centers. Many stems grow on the little plants and they keep coming through the summer.

It’s called winged everlasting because the stems have a round core with flat panels coming out alongside the core. Kind of like wings.

And they’re good for drying. Except, they need to be harvested before it’s too late for the prettiest results. See Harvesting below.

The flowers support a wide variety of pollinators and beneficial insects so you can get some natural pest protection from them.

How to grow Ammobium

Zones 9-10 for perennial use, lower than zone 9 you may need to treat as an annual; full sun; ordinary, to good garden soil, well-drained, which means they don’t want too much water.

Ammobium is easy to start from seed. Start them in late winter to early spring in a spot that’s protected from frost and severe weather.

How to harvest the flowers

White Ammobiun plant with the white flowers on top of about 18 inch stems. — Ammobium plant with some flowers.

The stems are nice and tall and easy to cut from the basal foliage.

It’s best to harvest before the centers are showing. When used in a fresh bouquet the flowers will open and the yellow centers will be revealed. And they’re pretty either way.

But when you want the flowers for dried use, you’ll need to keep this in mind: if the yellow center is showing at harvest it will turn to a dark blackish-brown when it’s dried. Even if the flower is close to showing its center, it will open as it dries. And turn blackish-brown. So you need to pick the flower well before it will bloom, but not when it’s immature. You’ll get a feel for it with practice.

But you may be fine with the dark color of the center, and some people are. I see them in many arrangements that way. My preference is to use the starry-looking flowers to dot my dried creations and the dark centers take away from the effect. So it’s really a personal preference.

How to dry the flowers

Tie into small bundles and hang in a warm, airy, dark place. Or dry partially and work into wreaths while their stems are still supple enough to bend.