How to grow windflowers in your home garden

Each autumn, the Blue Mountains Botanic Garden at Mount Tomah transforms into a field of windflowers with delicate soft pink and white blooms that dance above lush green foliage. 

They’re also known as anemones, but they’ve recently been reclassified and moved into the genus Eriocapitella. These elegant perennials are a highlight of the cool‑climate garden, and the good news is they’re surprisingly easy to grow at home. 

With expert advice from Marion Whitehead, Supervisor of Ornamental Gardens and Nursery, here’s how you can successfully grow windflowers in your own garden. 

The key to growing healthy windflowers is putting them in the right place: 

While they are relatively tough plants, windflowers don’t enjoy prolonged drought, so choose a position where they won’t dry out completely over summer.

One of the easiest ways to grow windflowers is by dividing existing clumps. This can be done once plants are established and healthy.

The key is to space new divisions about 15 centimetres apart, water well after planting and mulching lightly to help retain moisture and protect roots.  

Once settled, windflowers will gradually spread and sometimes enthusiastically form large, graceful drifts over time.  

Windflowers are famously low‑maintenance, making them ideal for both beginner and experienced gardeners. 

Each year, the wildflower display returns stronger than the last, with plants growing larger and producing more blooms. As the flowers spread across the landscape, they attract visitors from near and far who come to see the colour and activity.  

While people enjoy the display, the most important visitors are the pollinator bees. The flowers provide a reliable late‑season food source, supporting native bees and European honeybees at a critical time of year and helping maintain the health of the local ecosystem. 

The scientific name for windflowers used to be Anemone japonica. Anemone comes from the Greek word for wind ‘nemos,’ and the dainty flowers do dance in the slightest breeze. It also stems from Greek mythology and according to legend, the flowers sprang up where the tears of Aphrodite fell into the blood of her fallen lover, Adonis. This gave windflowers a long‑held symbolism of great love and sorrow.

However, new scientific understandings of evolutionary relationships, largely driven by advances in DNA sequencing, often lead to the reclassification of plant species. Due to distinct taxonomic differences (particularly in their fruiting structures) windflowers were moved into a different genus and are now Eriocapitella hupehensis.

While it can be frustrating, by updating names to reflect evolutionary history, experts can prevent the loss of distinct, rare species that were previously hidden within larger, common groups.

For instance, research into the native Australian Leptospermum genus revealed that several species were not closely related to the core group, leading to the identification of new genera, such as Gaudium. This, in turn, helps to better manage the conservation and environmental impact of these trees.

Japanese windflowers or anemones have recently been renamed and are now in the genus Eriocapitella, which means 'woolly little head' derived from both Greek and Latin - Marion Whitehead