“It is the birthright of all poppies to bear flowers of ephemeral beauty, as the finest silk.” Wayne Winterrowd
Gentle neglect. Dishevelment and abandon. Sweet disorder. There are many ways to look at an in tidy garden, many ways to appreciate a bit of havoc and shambles. Tip toe around the nasturtiums sprawling onto the path. Duck under nodding sunflower heads. Stride over a prickly pumpkin vine. “The very soul of a garden is shriveled by zealous regimentation... a mania for neatness, a list for conformity and away goes atmosphere and sensuality.” Thus wrote Mirabel Osler in the aptly titled book, A Gentle Plea For Chaos.
The rewards of this gentle chaos are numerous plants which will multiply. Plants that are not sheared back and deadheaded come to fruition and set seed. Many will reproduce; they will self-sow, volunteer.
The most impressive volunteer is the forger-me-not, Myosotis sylvatica. Once established and let loose, forget-me-nots will fill in spaces with sky-blue in late spring and early summer. If they show up in unwanted places, they are easy to pull up or dig up to transplant. If there are too many, they make perfect gifts for those without. Forger-me-nots are beautiful and then, suddenly, they are not. They become really unattractive. Rip them out, strew the seeds about; and they’ll be back next year.
There are quite a few poppies that are prodigious self-sowers. The opium or bread seed poppy, Papaver somniferous, is a beauty. The foliage is a soft celadon green on a stalk 3-4 feet tall. Flower buds appear in June. An early morning visit to the garden may be rewarded by the sight of a poppy pushing off the bud’s cover to reveal the unfolding crinkled blossom. Flower shapes and colors vary. Double Pom-Pom varieties (which I have called my Phyllis Diller poppies) occasionally appear in my garden. I prefer the single blossoms. Seed of single colors are available. ‘Lauren’s Grape’ is the delicious color of Welch’s grape juice. ‘Peshawar White’ and ‘Imperial Pink’ are valuable pure shades. After flowering, the seed heads of opium poppies are stunning structures on their own and are filled with thousands of poppy seeds which should be left to mature. If uncollected the pods will gradually scatter the seeds for next year, or the seed can be collected to plant elsewhere or to be used in cooking.
Shirley, Flanders, and corn poppies are all names of Papaver rhoeus, which are smaller than opium poppies. The original is a single bright red. In the late 1880s strains with fantastic pastel shades were developed by the Reverend W. Wilkes in Shirley, England; hence one of the names of this poppy. Later, double-flowered were introduced. Seeds under the names, ‘fairy wings’, ‘mother of pearl’, and ‘double Shirley’ are available.
Eschscholzia californica, the California poppy native to the southwest United States, is a brilliant yellow orange. Again, many new strains have been developed from the original. Mixed colors, single whites, reds, and double flowers such as ‘Jelly Beans’ or ‘Bridal Bouquet’ can be found. I enjoyed the ‘Jelly Bean’ strain last season for both the multi-colored blooms and the silly name.
All these poppies are easy to establish in the garden by sowing directly in the fall or early spring. If you are impatient for flowers, started plants are available at some nurseries. But I find that plants from directly sown seeds are stronger and longer-lived than transplants.
There are two plants, technically weeds, that I introduced into my garden and both are good at at self-sowing, as most weeds are. Giant pokeweed, Phytolacca decandra, a native plant, is a big, bold beauty. When mature, late in the season, it has bright purple stems and dark purple berries (used for dye), on a five-foot stalk. If you have room, this perennial has an impressive presence. Small seedlings can be transplanted fairly easily.
My other favorite weed, teasel, Dipsacus fullonum, produces a spiny, rangey stalk in its second year with sculptural flower structures. Young flowers put out pink bracts around a cylindrical cone surrounded by upward-curving spikes. As the plants dries after flowering. It holds its shape, leaving an interesting structure for snow to settle upon.
To encourage self-sowing it is important to allow seeds to be produced. Once they have germinated it is important to allow them to grow. It takes a while to learn to recognize the valuable from the unwanted, but the free plants are worth the effort. A gentle disorder, a casual charm will allow volunteers to flourish, will add a degree of spontaneity. Pleasant surprises will be found when not expected.
Mirabel Osler wrote in another book, A Breath From Elsewhere, “Considering how we are daily besieged through mass communication by horrors in life that stab us in the heart or the back, then planting a lily may miraculously be all that’s needed to bring us upright again.” Written in 1998 and more true in 2017.
March 2017
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