Wouldn't it be great if your flowers magically replanted themselves? Well, some do!
Many of our favorite garden flowers are prolific reseeders, that is, they scatter their seed all on their own, year after year.
Both annuals and perennials reseed, but this article will focus on annual reseeders since annuals, unlike most perennials, bloom the same year that the seed is planted — or in this case, plants itself.
Not all annuals will reseed themselves, but many will. Here's how to encourage reseeders in your garden:
- Avoid planting them in heavily mulched areas. Reseeders do best in areas with very little mulch. Mulch is great for preventing weeds, but it also prevents reseeding annuals from making contact with the soil and taking root.
- To encourage a plant to reseed, don't trim it back. Allow flowers to stay on the plant and allow any seed pods you can see to ripen, that is, turn brown and shrivel up.
- In the spring, keep an eye out for the tiny, emerging plants. You'll need to learn to identify them even when they're small or you are likely accidentally to weed them out. If you're organized, take photos. Or if you're unsure, Google it to see what that plant's newly emerging seedlings look like.
- As the reseeders start to grow, you may need to edit them, that is, thin them out or move them around for best effect. I like to plant mine in large, grouped clusters rather than have them spread out thinly or randomly through an area, but you might prefer a different look.
- Different plants perform differently in different gardens and in different years. Some years you may have way too much of a reseeder and some years you might have very few, or none at all.
- Conversely, a reseeder might become a nuisance, depending on your garden and conditions. I don't suggest planting non-hybridized morning glories, for example, because they are so invasive. In my garden, I planted one 20 years ago and I'm still battling them. Most of the reseeders listed in this article can be removed from your garden with a year or two of weeding them out. Or you can control them somewhat by trimming off spent flowers. (Be careful about tossing seed heads into a compost heap or you may spread the seeds along with your compost.)
Reseeders are a wonderful addition to most gardens. They are the plants that just keep on giving.
Here are some of my favorite annuals (or perennials that behave like annuals) that I allow to reseed freely.
- Poppies, annual types
- Coreopsis, annuals types
- Black-eyed Susan, annual types
- Bachelor buttons
- Borage
- California poppies
- Calendula
- Chives
- Cilantro
- Cleome
- Cornflower
- Cosmos*
- Dill
- Johnny jump-up
- Larkspur
- Leaf lettuces
- Marigolds*
- Nasturtium
- Oxeye daisies
- Parsley
- Snapdragons
- Sunflowers*
- Sweet alyssum
- Verbena bonariensis
- Zinnias*
* Be sure to get a non-hybridized type, which tends to reseed better and more true to the parent plant. All "heirloom" cultivars of these plants will reseed freely.