PULLMAN, Wash. — Farmers get excited when they hear about Washington State University postdoctoral researcher John Hadish’s new yarrow project.

“People seem to light up about it,” he said. “That’s encouraging to me, because it shows that people are actually interested in the research. … A lot of people know what it is just because it’s very common.”

Yarrow is a small herbaceous plant. It grows alongside areas with lots of sunshine, such as meadows and prairies.

It was used for lawns and ornamentals in the 16th and 17th centuries, in mixtures with plants such as chamomile and thyme.

“When we think of a lawn today, we think of a pure grass,” Hadish said. “When people think of a perfect lawn, they think of no weeds or anything.”

Hadish sees potential for yarrow in contemporary lawns because it is drought-resistant.

“There’s more than 40 million acres of lawn in America alone,” he said. “The vast majority of that has to be irrigated.”

Providing an option to replace even a small portion of that acreage would be beneficial, he said.

Low-impact lawns

WSU’s grass breeding farm has two plots to evaluate yarrow varieties from the U.S. National Plant Germplasm System. Researchers will evaluate leaves for turf performance and flowers for pollination.

“We want to test the yarrow to see how durable it is,” Hadish said. “One big concern people have when planting a lawn is they want to be able to still walk on it without killing it.”

For many homeowners, the only time they walk on their lawn is while mowing it, he said.

“Regular grass, you might have to be mowing your lawn once a week and in the peak of the season, twice a week,” Hadish said. “But yarrow, you can go three to four weeks without having to mow anything.”

A third plot is a naturalized population of yarrow primarily used to collect seed.

Yarrow’s been bred for ornamental varieties, but not necessarily for turf quality traits.

“It excites me just because no one else has really done anything with this,” Hadish said. “I think there’s a lot of opportunity to make some headway on this, and make some advancements that hopefully would be beneficial to homeowners and growers here in the (Pacific Northwest).”

Uses for yarrow

The majority of yarrow occurs in the wild, or in habitats incidentally created by humans, such as along roadways.

It can be used for land remediation, to restore or recover land or to plant in ditches to avoid soil loss, due to its deep root structure.

“It’s beautiful, it’s very low-maintenance and it’s good for pollinators,” Hadish said.

Commercial yarrow acres are “negligible,” Hadish said. But yarrow could be produced in dryland agriculture.

A WSU yarrow variety could eventually be in the works, he said. It can take five to 10 years to breed a new variety.

Specialty niche crop

Yarrow could help turf farmers branch out into a conservation crop.

Hadish sees a dearth of lawn alternatives at a time when demand is high, as homeowners work to reduce their ecological footprint.

“You don’t want to be planting water-hungry lawns all the time,” he said. “I’m not saying this is going to replace everything, but there’s instances where this could be a viable alternative.”

Because not many people are raising yarrow, the plant can cost from $40 to $80 per pound.

“This is definitely a specialty niche crop,” Hadish said. “That’s an opportunity for farmers, when they’re diversifying their portfolio, to make this more valuable for them.”

Yarrow does require specialty tools for harvesting, but most turfgrass farmers with a conservation combine can harvest the crop, he said.

Farmers interested in learning more about yarrow can contact Hadish at john.hadish@wsu.edu

For more about yarrow

Farmers interested in learning more about yarrow can contact researcher John Hadish at john.hadish@wsu.edu