Grow Sweet Annie for Fresh and Dried Bouquets
(Artemisia annua) Sweet Wormwood
Sweet Annie is an annual artemisia. It has a wonderful fragrance, it’s a tiny bit sticky with its resin. Its foliage is ferny and delicate making it a perfect summer, fragrant, bouquet filler. It dries well for dried bouquets and for wreath making, and it’s very easy to grow.
Being an artemisia it joins some other artemisias that are often called wormwood, though that term usually refers to Artemisia absinthium, which has a psychoactive compound, thujone.
Sweet Annie does not have this compound but it has been used medicinally for centuries, mostly as a remedy for malaria. But the World Health Organization advises not to use the plant as a malaria medicine. See Special Info for more.
Most of the wormwoods have a strong, pleasant fragrance, and Sweet Annie has one of the sweetest and most pleasant.
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What Sweet Annie plants and flowers are like
Sweet Annie is an annual, fast growing plant with fern-like fragrant foliage. The flowers are small, petalless, ball shaped flowers. They need to be harvested just before they start to drop their pollen so they don’t get too messy om your table. Or you can wait till the pollen is dropped to harvest. See more on harvesting below.
The plant grows to 6 ft. tall and to 4-5 ft. wide, spreading with horizontal branches.
How to grow Sweet Annie
Annual: latesummer to fall blooming; full sun; water: regular garden watering, can be a little on the dry side.
Days to maturity from seed is about 100 days, so you need to start them early, but after danger of frost. They’re easy to start by seed in seed trays or direct sow. They need light to germinate so don’t cover, or just barely cover with soil when you plant. To direct sow into a garden bed you can sprinkle the seeds and lightly rake over them. Thin them to about 12 in. apart when they’re several inches tall.
The plant is at harvest stage when the little flowers are developed. This is late summer.
Sweet Annie tolerates drought but grows bigger if it gets regular water. It tolerates a wide range of soils, so it can go into one of your less fertile garden beds.
It’s said to resist deer. I do believe that because all the artemisias I’ve known do, but I simply haven’t tried it yet, so I can’t vouch for that yet.
If you let the plant go to seed, which is easy to do, you’ll likely end up with volunteers the next summer. Just shake the ripe branches (with flowers that are past the pollen dropping stage) around where you want them to grow next. They will drop their seeds and sit there till the next season.
How to harvest Sweet Annie
The foliage is ready to harvest in late summer.
It’s best to harvest when the tiny flowers are plump and round but before the pollen is dropping. Shake the branches to check for this. If you harvest too early the stems are thin and don’t last well in the vase.
Or you can harvest them after the pollen but before the seeds drop. Catching the window between these events is best. But if you can tolerate some messiness, anytime is fine.
You can harvest whole branches for fresh or dried use. If you’ll be drying them, keep them in smaller bundles because they can get brittle once dry and they could break apart too much. But they are fairly forgiving.
If you harvest them when the flowers are just full but not shedding pollen, seeds, or other little bits then you can hang them to dry. If it’s too early the ends will droop and be straight rather than naturally curved. And they’ll be more likely to droop in damp weather.
If you want to dry the branches, but harvested too late, they tend to lose their green color and turn brown. This will also happen if any finished dried flowers are in too much light. And they’ll turn brown eventually, so strive to harvest early enough for a longer green.
And when harvested at the right time. You can put them upright in a vase to dry…making a nice instant arrangement.
A couple of things to keep in mind about Sweet Annie:
- the pretty green color fades to light brown; it happens faster in sunlight, so keep that in mind
- when the stems are dry, they shed quite easily, so it’s best to place them and leave them alone when they’re dry
- if you want to make a wreath with the branches, work with them while fresh and allow them to dry in place; and be sure to use them at the right time described above
Favorite varieties
It’s the only one. There are other artemisias, though. The other one I love to use is ‘Silver King.’
Sources for Sweet Annie seeds
Many other seed companies offer Sweet Annie seeds, often at your local nursery. You’ll rarely find plant starts in nurseries, but if you poke around small local plant sales you could very likely find starts for these. But it’s super simple to start them yourself.
Special Info on Sweet Annie
The compound in Sweet Annie that is used in anti-malarial medicines is artemisinin. Currently all strains of malaria can be treated by it. And medicines are made with it. But in many areas with high malaria rates the medicines are unavailable or too expensive to buy, leading people to use homemade substitutes.
Homemade preparations can vary greatly in their potency. Malaria is a deadly disease from parasites and dosages need to be effective to kill all the parasites. One of WHO’s concerns is that the herbal remedies could hasten the development of artemisinin resistance.
Read more on this at the World Health Organization’s website.
Flowers to go with Sweet Annie
African Marigolds
These tall, full marigolds come in a rich orange and lemon yellow for beautiful summer bouquets.
For Dried Arrangements:
Strawflowers
The strong colors of strawflowers enhance any dried arrangement! Learn how to work with them.
Gomphrena
These great drying flowers are also known as globe thistle and they can be used fresh and dried.
Breadseed Poppies
These big, cool flowers yield attractive pods filled with poppy seeds! They’re perfect dried.
