For free.

When I worked on a nursery I didn't overly appreciate the customers who would regale me with stories of how they'd grown this from a pinched cutting, that from something someone had given them and so on. Not good for business, people growing things for themselves.

Of course, now I'm retired and my income somewhat curtailed, it's all very different. Why would I pay for what I can grow myself. And of course I have the knowledge to grow most of the things I want.

This post though is about the things that I have neither paid money for nor grown myself. It being Aquilegia season, my mind turned to the things that sow themselves around my garden and provide me with a show without my lifting a finger.

When I really looked, I was surprised by how much of the colour in my garden was provided by these volunteers. If I never planted another thing, I could have a packed garden just by doing nothing. There is a spectrum of desirability of course. A good display makes invasive tendencies more tolerable. And there is a point beyond which a plant is a weed, no matter how pretty it is. Celendines, dandelions, yellow archangel I have but don't want, and make every effort to control (= kill).

Welsh poppy is right on the dividing line. Beautiful for sure, clear yellow but somehow never really clashing with anything; and the leaves are attractive enough too. Just a thought, but why do slugs never go for those soft, juicy stems and leaves? I dig out a lot of them, but there are always some that manage to flower. I've had yellow ones for many years, this year a couple of orange ones have appeared. Their relative novelty means I shall probably cut them a bit of slack compared to their yellow cousins, and live to regret doing so. They have a nasty habit of seeding right in the middle of other plants where they are almost impossible to dislodge.

Welsh poppy, Meconopsis cambrica.

Aquilegia is a plant of childhood memory. I remember a range of colours, all somewhat subdued, the flowers not overly large, the leaves prone to mildew. The ones we have all over the garden have very respectable sized blooms, in an astonishing range of colours; well mostly an astonishing range of shades of blue/purple. They seed prodigiously and every year I am accused of weeding almost all of them out, which I probably do, so we're only left with a few hundred plants to do it all again.

Columbine, Aquilegia vulgaris.

I have a trio of volunteer Corydalis. For many years Corydalis ochroleuca never managed to do more than replace itself. I'd get excited because a new seedling had appeared, only for the parent plant to promptly die. In the last couple of years it has done rather better and I now have quite a drift under a yew, conditions I'm surprised it finds congenial. It's pretty much evergreen and flowers all summer. Corydalis cheilanthifolia flowers very early in the year and disappears. The fine ferny leaves look impossibly delicate yet shrug off the worst of weather. Yellow flowers are carried in spikes about 15-20cm tall.


Corydalis ochroleuca and C. cheilanthifolia.

The other Corydalis volunteered itself just once, but has bulked up considerably since. It is Corydalis solida, which just appeared one year. These days I am quite capable of buying and planting such a plant then completely forgetting I ever did; but I was younger then. I have no idea how it got there; not even in the flower garden, but amongst fruit trees and bushes. It is the epitome of ephemeral, emerging in March, flowering in April and gone, leaving not a trace by the end of May.

Corydalis solida.

A brace of Violas are always with us. Viola tricolor is a charming little plant that seeds freely about and produces a succession of blooms for months in spring. My partner dries flowers to make cards and they are eminently suitable, so I even have masses of them on my allotment. The other is Viola labradorica, for which I do not have a good word. It was gifted to us by a neighbour; deliberately not accidentally and if I'd have known then what I know now I would have made an excuse and run for the hills. Dull dirty purple foliage, meagre display of inconsequential flowers, fast spreading by runners and seeds, very hard to eradicate - don't get me started!

Viola tricolor and V. labradorica.

OK, I got myself started. There are a few that I try to keep on a very tight leash and would probably prefer to be without. Crocosmia 'Lucifer' is probably a magnificent plant. I say probably because what I have are seedlings many generations removed from the plant I bought. Magnificent they are not; the flowers last a week and that is generally spent lying in the dirt having collapsed under their own weight. And I can't get rid of it; there's always a few corms left behind.
Dicentra Formosa is the same. I have bought named forms only to have them swamped by their own inferior seedlings. They're nice enough but they are a bit too fond of life here and want to take over.
I've had a few Euphorbias that have become a nuisance. The current pest is a purple leaved thing I don't know the name of and have no particular desire to know. Euphorbia characias and E. mellifera are among the more welcome members of the genus though my mellifera is many years old and in rude health, so I don't let it seed because one is enough. It will one day die and I won't have a replacement. C'est la vie.
Libertia grandiflora or formosa or whatever it is, seeds prodigiously and the seedlings keep coming for years and years. I think I mainly got bored with it; it doesn't give me enough to justify its bullying nature. Incidentally, I used to have Libertia ixioides and currently have a self sown plant that looks like a hybrid between that species and the much taller L. grandiflora. Meritorious IMO; perhaps I'll make my fortune with it.


Crocosmia 'Lucifer', Dicentra Formosa, Euphorbia sp, Libertia.

What was Stipa arundinacea when I first got it, now Anemanthele, was also an overly enthusiastic seed producer. I think my main problem was that the seeds survived my compost heap and ended up everywhere. Years of persecuting it have almost succeeded in wiping it out and I'm ever so slightly missing its many good qualities. Two other grasses maintain a presence at about the right level by seeding about. They are Carex 'Silver Curls' and Stipa tenuissima and they are welcome here.

Carex 'Frosted Curls' and Stipa tenuissima.

I'll finish with another trio that were planted to fill a particular niche and have seen fit to move on and carve out their own. Californian poppy was sown years ago and comes back each year, never far from where it started, so it seemingly approved of its location. Lamium orvala has stuck to the shadier spots but spread far from where it started. It started as the usual red-purple form but has produced white flowered seedlings as well as very occasional intermediate forms. Finally there's Brunnera macrophylla 'Jack Frost', which seeds about fairly freely and comes tantalisingly close to being as silvery as its parent, but never quite makes it. What the seedlings do better than the parent is flower. I get a rather meagre display from the original but was stopped in my tracks by the splash of blue one of its progeny was putting on. A day later, when I finally got to it with the camera, it was nowhere near as good. At least I'd seen it at its best, if I hadn't recorded it.

Escholtzia californica, Lamium orvala and Brunnera macrophylla.

I could add as many again, but perhaps another time. Suffice it to say that the garden elves are doing a good deal of gardening for me and I would like them to know that I appreciate it.