Think of Volunteers as Plants, Not Weeds
What many gardeners call “volunteers” are desirable plants that come back from seed on their own or “self-sow,” as garden jargon would have it. Think of garden volunteers as weeds you want.
Some plants that suddenly appear are actually sprouting from underground roots or stolons that have crept in from someplace else. One of my favorites, the roving, royal purple Verbena rigida, behaves like this although it also comes back from self-sown seed.
Another verbena, the 6-foot-tall Verbena bonariensis is the perfect example of a volunteer. It does not spread at all, but reseeds with abandon. In spring, seedlings come up like grass, and while I would never be without a few of these oddly proportioned plants, I confess I spend a good deal of time weeding out the unwanted.
Several steady volunteers verge on being total weeds in my garden. If Aristea ecklonii weren’t so pretty and useful, I’d take every one out of the garden, just to stop it from seeding about. But aristea grows in the shade with iris foliage and true blue flowers, so I put up with the hundreds of seedlings.
Ditto with Erigeron karvinskianus, the Santa Barbara daisy. It’s the perfect filler but a prolific reseeder. Lychnis coronaria ‘Alba’ is another self-seeder I couldn’t live without. Its gray-white leaves and pure-white flowers look good wherever they come up.
Seeding about like this may be too much for some tidy gardeners. One wrote me several years ago that she wished she had never planted Verbena bonariensis, which I had suggested as a very pretty and useful plant for the garden. Be forewarned.
Some of us, however, are thankful for any help we get from nature, and, indeed, don’t consider a garden mature and in order until this kind of disorder breaks out.
A lot of the plants in my garden that are wont to volunteer came from friend Chris Rosmini’s huge and varied garden. This garden designer grows more kinds of plants than anyone I know, more than some botanic gardens, I suspect, so her volunteers are often surprisingly exotic.
She has tradescantias and sisyrinchiums that volunteer, and corydalis. The ferny, gray-leaved Corydalis heterocarpa “is as pretty as any ground cover you can plant,” Rosmini says. “I like to think of it as my version of the English Alchemilla mollis,” which gardeners over there use to great effect as a dramatic edging or filler.
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Many true geraniums in Rosmini’s garden come up from seed, and she has observed that “when something seeds itself, it grows faster and more vigorously than if you had bought and planted one.”
This is certainly true of the Geranium incanum in my garden, and G. sanguineum ‘Album’ and G. robustum in Rosmini’s.
The viny blueberry climber Ampelopsis brevipedunculata is one that verges on being a noxious weed, if it weren’t for those red- and white-splashed leaves and bright blue berries.
Many consider the incredibly delicate Mexican feather grass Stipa tenuissima a noxious weed, “but it’s an awfully nice one,” Rosmini says.
Most of these garden volunteers “are easy to get rid of if you don’t want them. They’re not deep-rooted or tenacious, like those weedy palm seedlings.” she adds.
Referring to the obnoxious but pretty reseeders, she says, “There are parts of the garden where I simply let these thugs fight it out.”
All of the volunteers mentioned are perennial plants, but many annuals come back from seed in the garden. We often call these wildflowers, such as our own California poppy, the red corn poppy, and the native clarkia, which come back from seed with regularity in my garden. In spring, Rosmini’s garden is full of nigella, also known as love-in-a-mist, and the striking Cerinthe major. Annual sweet alyssum is so persistent that it is considered by most to have crossed that ill-defined boundary from volunteer reseeder to weed.
I know I’ve left some out, so if you can think of other reliable and pretty volunteers, let me know. I’m starting a list--I think my next garden may be all volunteer.
In the Garden is published Thursdays. Write to Robert Smaus, SoCal Living, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053; fax to (213) 237-4712; or e-mail robert.smaus@latimes.com.
