Botanical name: Galium odoratum
Folk names: Hay plant, kiss-me-quick
Part-shade or part-sun
Perennial, flowers April to June

Wildlife: Nectar for bees and other pollinators from its mass of small flowers in spring and early summer. Shelter for insects from its low-growing mat of foliage. Deciduous, so its dropped leaves may help provide nesting material for hedgehogs and helpful mulch for soil life.

Decorative merit: Small, star-like, white flowers lighting up shady places where its whorls of green, lance-shaped leaves spread by rhizomes to provide helpful ground cover.

Where: Moist but not boggy soil so try in the mulch zone under hedges and shrubs where it can happily spread or in wilder, shadier parts of the garden where there’s room for it to roam.

Folklore: A woodland herb once dried and hung in homes for its vanilla-like scent of ‘freshly mown hay’ and used in Elizabethan ‘nosegays’. Traditionally used to flavour ‘Maibowle’ punch in Germany.

Bedstraw family relative of lady’s bedstraw (coming soon!)

Donate seeds to Exeter Seed Bank