Sunday, September 2

Cultivating garden freebies

Reseeders give back year after year

Ann Tice loves to cast annual reseeders among her perennials. The resulting blend of serendipity and human intervention is an amazing combination of colors and textures.

Some gardeners hate them. Some gardeners love them. But as their classification implies, reseeding annuals are literally here to stay.
If you adore a soft cottage look, find that there are always “holes” in your perennial border, or if you just like tons of plants for a small investment, these very prolific flowers are for you.
Here are some of my personal favorites:

Larkspur
Larkspurs (Consolida ajacis) are the next best thing to delphiniums — a perennial that rarely survives more than a year or two in my garden. Like those cousins, larkspurs come in shades of purple, blue, rose and white and grow in stately spires two to four feet high. Larkspur is an avid resower, but it’s easy to pull out the extras. And I like how it finds its own spot in the garden. I also like the way that its tall spires carry the garden from the time the iris and peonies stop blooming all the way through until the daylilies finish.

A cool weather grower, I’ve usually pulled almost all of mine out by mid-July. (As they get yellowed at the base, I just yank them, making sure to save the seeds of course.) I do leave a few and just trim them back so they will continue to bloom. Don’t let all your larkspur go to seed, though. You will be overwhelmed with seedlings next year.
Most garden centers sell larkspur seeds and most catalogs, too. But the best way to get them is through a friend who is already growing them. I just toss some seeds on the ground as I pull up the old plants. These will make seedlings by fall, overwinter and then bloom next spring. I also like to toss some of my saved seeds out in late March or early April to insure a good crop even after the rabbits get their share. (Larkspurs can be poisonous to some animals, especially cattle, but I’ve never seen a bunny carcass yet.)

Golden feverfew
Happy, chartreuse-colored leaves form a gold carpet in early April and really set off the greening grass and daffodils — perfect during that that time of year when gardeners are so anxious to see something growing.

Golden feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium ‘Aureum’) eventually reaches 12 to 16 inches high. I love it scattered here and there throughout the garden. (It travels a bit, too.) It makes Heuchera ‘Obsidian’ shine, compliments Sedum telephium ‘Sunset Cloud,’ lightens partly shaded areas and provides a great break from all green foliage from April through fall.

Since I like the foliage so well, I keep golden feverfew trimmed back until later in the summer when I let some flower. It produces tiny sprays of white daisy-like flowers that float at the top and, although not overly showy, are still lovely. I also gather some seed and let some, not all, self-sow.

Papaver somniferum ‘Lauren's Grape’ is backed by white nicotiana, another frequent reseeder.

Breadseed poppy
Blooming from mid-May to mid-July, this flower (Papaver somniferum ‘Lauren’s Grape’) always elicits comments. It stands out with lovely, large-leafed blue green foliage and spectacular plum-purple blooms atop two-and-a-half- to three-foot tall stems. Even the drying seedpods are attractive.

Toss out the tiny seeds in mid-April, but don’t cover them or forget where they are and mulch over them. I just run my hand over the soil to make sure they have good contact but don’t really cover them. If they come up very thickly after they sprout, it helps to thin them. When the lower leaves begin to yellow and the flowers taper off in July, I pull them out and toss a few of the seedpods around where they grew. (The tops of the rounded pods have tiny holes in them so the dried seeds just sprinkle out like they are in nifty little salt shakers!) Save the rest of the seeds in a paper lunch sack until they are completely dried, then put them in ziplock baggies or old medicine bottles, labeled, until spring when they can be sprinkled in sunny areas of the garden.

Hummingbird sage
This white salvia (Salvia coccinea ‘Snow Nymph’) does reseed but it doesn’t always come true to color. Seedlings may produce two-toned, coral pink or reddish flowers occasionally. When it self seeds, the plants provide color when the larkspurs leave off in mid summer and continue blooming all the way through until fall. Like the larkspurs, it has an upright form and will find its way into any holes in tiring, later-summer beds and fill them nicely.

The soft coral-pink flowers of Salvia coccinea ‘Snow Nymph’ can carry a border from late July through fall.

Love in a mist
This delightfully-airy, early-season bloomer (Nigella damascena) also comes in white, but the blue version is such a ‘clear-day, sky blue’ that I like it best. The foliage is very fine and ferny and makes a great texture contrast to bolder foliage plants. Love in a mist even has attractive seedpods that extend its seasons of interest. I’ve found that it’s a little more particular about where it sets up housekeeping than some reseeders are. It seems to like full sun and soil that’s a bit on the drier side.

Sweet alyssum
I initially planted the annual sweet alyssum (Lobularia maritima) as a front of the border accent. Now that I’ve learned what the tiny seedlings look like and I don’t mistake them for weeds and pull them, it comes back every year. It loves the cooler temperatures of spring and fall, but may begin to look ratty during the hot, humid summer months. I just cut it back a little when that happens and it still makes a froth of white around our mailbox — where conditions are dry. The white variety has proven to be most hardy and the best resower for me. The pink and purple varieties just don’t show as well through the summer and also seem reluctant to self-seed.

Four o’clock
As their name implies, the twisted, bright-fuchsia blooms of four o’clocks (Mirabilis jalapa) open in the afternoon. With its chartreuse foliage, the cultivar ‘Limelight’ is my favorite. It comes on mid July and lasts until fall, producing black seeds that are easy to harvest for sowing later.

Upright verbena
This is the perfect ‘see-through’ plant (Verbena bonariensis) . Its tall (up to three feet) airy blooms look great at the back of the border but also create a dramatic, floating effect when mixed with annual geraniums or other shorter plants. It blooms from mid summer until fall. A prolific reseeder if it’s happy, but the seedlings are easy enough to thin out. (Needs full sun or it will flop.)

It took me some time to learn what the tiny emergent foliage of all these plants looked like as they came up in the spring and summer, but now that I’ve stopped mistaking them for weeds, they have given me endless joy with their foliage interest and long season of bloom. Once you get them started in your own garden, I’m sure that they will continually delight you, too, as they create their own color combinations and impromptu garden designs.

Ann Tice is a recent winner in the Chicago Tribune’s “Glorious Gardening” contest. Not only does she tend filled-to-the-brim borders in her own Champaign, Ill., yard, but she also serves as an officer for that county’s Master Gardener program and is a volunteer at the University of Illinois Idea Garden.