Astrantias are dainty plants with branching stems. Each individual pincushion of tiny flowers is held together by an attractively veined jagged collar of bracts. In recent years there has been an explosion of varieties and they now come in a far wider range of colours. The red one pictured above is a stunner and I bought it simply named ‘red seedling’. It’s one of the most admired plants in the garden.

When I started growing Hattie’s pincushion, to give astrantia its colloquial name, there were only two forms available. The running A. maxima has lobed foliage resembling that of a hellebore and it used to be called A. helleborifolia. This shade-loving plant rambles through borders popping up every now and again producing baby-pink flowers in June and July. I still grow this gentle form today. But most of the named forms are bred from a clump-forming species called A. major. This May-flowering species was introduced from Austria in 1597 and then known as masterwort. William Robinson, the Victorian gardener, admitted that these flowers had a quaint beauty of their own.

From the 1940s to the 1960s Margery Fish grew a green and white form which she named ‘Shaggy’. This tall plant with large leaves is still avidly admired and is available from the National Collection holders (Warren Hills Nursery: 01530 812350). But it often takes time to produce its central giant flower and a retinue of lesser ones – so don’t expect immediate results. It took me many years to get the correct form and then another few before I was happy. But every May I worship at its shady feet.

It’s one of the astrantias that like cool feet and shade and I grow it with ferns. There are shorter forms that prefer some sun and ‘Buckland’ is a sterile, long-flowering pale-pink variety which happily tolerates full sun. It will flower from May until September.

Other good forms include the striking sugar-pink ‘Roma’ – a sterile seedling from ‘Ruby Wedding’. ‘Canneman’ is a variable seed-raised form with striped green and pink bracts and I am also growing another subtle, subdued one from Beth Chatto called ‘Stonewell Perpetual’.

There are some murky, dead-looking reds on offer. They include ‘Moulin Rouge’, a poor plant that has appeared in almost every nursery. But it is the clear red-ink reds that inspire and they include the dark-stemmed ‘Claret’, the darkly-tipped ‘Hadspen Blood’ and the pretty ‘Ruby Wedding.

Given moist soil, these will flower profusely in May and then repeat-flower in the cool of September. Astrantias are valuable garden plants for extending a shady border where oriental hellebores have finished. Snip away the flowers as they brown to prevent unwanted seedlings. The flowers also please the insects, for like all members of the cow parsley family they attract hoverflies.

These stripy, harmless creatures have tiny mouths and they prefer small flowers. They collect nectar, their energy drink, and ingest pollen and then they mate and breed. Females hone in on aphid colonies and then lay their pale, rugby-ball shaped eggs in the middle of colonies. Their translucent larvae predate greenfly so astrantias are useful and decorative.