Sweet cicely is a delicious, versatile plant!
Sweet cicely is well known to emanate a sweet licorice fragrance, which you can also taste in the snackable immature seed pods. A great treat for sweet loving children.
The flowers are large white umbels typical of the carrot and celery family. Great for pollinators!
It has a large, juicy taproot that helps to deeply open soils. The fern like leaves are very pretty as a foliage plant.
It can do very well in a part shade garden. I have it planted with solomon’s seal and ostrich ferns on a shady side of a house and it does very well there.
This year we have sweet cicely starts available, which are small, healthy one year old plants that are best planted in fall. Spring will work too, but be sure to water well to help them get off the ground. Expect to take close care of these plants for a year, but after that they will be a thriving perennial in your garden!
Growth Parameters:
Expect an herbaceous perennial whose ultimate size can be up to 6 feet tall in a full sun context, but more shade will keep the plant smaller. It won’t be quite as wide as it is tall, but the leaves do like to sprawl out.
