One of these days, I'll make a post that requires more thought, but for now, more garden photos will have to so ...
Here you can make out yellow Coreopsis in bloom in the center, and several foxgloveswith their long spikes of purple flowers above then and further from the camera
A self-seeded Rose Campion (Lychnis coronaria) with small magenta-colored flowersis growing on what should be the walkway to the left of center near the bottom of the picture. I decided not to pull it up because I have a general policy of not removing nice flowers that are kind enough to grow without even being deliberately planted.
Self-seeded foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea, I think)
Hostas with a Japanese painted fern kind of squashed between them
Common Milkweed (Asclepius syriaca) - another self-seeded plant, and a native. As the name implies, it is generally considered a weed, but IMHO it's a pretty and not-terribly-aggressive one that is conveniently filling in a spot that was bare before, so I decided that it's welcome. Behind it is a large clump of Oregano - first planted a decade ago by mom as a source of fresh spices, it quickly spread far beyond our puny needs for cooking, and now there are probably 15 clumps of it growing in various parts of the flower beds, which need to be partly torn out every year of two to prevent them from pushing out neighboring plants. It stays from a combination of my inertia and the fact that the flowers, while tiny, attract lots of insects, including butterflies and occasionally some odd orange and iridescent blue-colored hornets that I have never seen near any other flower in the garden.
2 comments:
I love these garden pics. I find self seeders so much satisfying than plants you have to coax. I often leave them but sometimes have to cull them and if I'm feeling energetic I'll move them. It's a paradox: guided randomness?
I have the lychnis, other self seeders are nigella (love in the mist) and forget me nots. Foxgloves don't self seed for me, probably because they want more moisture. I'm not familiar with the Common Milkweed.
I had forget-me-nots for several years, but they disappeared after a while - probably because a couple of taller perennials pushed into their little part of the garden and created too much shade for them to germinate.
Milkweed and its relatives are all natives of North America only, as far as I know. They aren't edible (mildly toxic) and don't have colorful flowers or other features that make them desirable for most gardens, so they aren't the kind of plants that people would deliberately transplant from one part of the world to another.
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