Self-Seeding Flowers

You plant or sow them once, enjoy the reason why you did it, and then, totally unchoreographed and spontaneously, they turn up again when you least expect it. These are the self-seeding flowers, naturalising plants that stay with you…

With the price of everything soaring, including gardening, we have to start thinking about flowering annuals, perennials and bulbous plants that don’t have to be replaced every year, at high cost. So it’s time to think about the returners, which wait patiently in the wings for a turn to perform again.

As we are already into our winter season, some regions might be too cold for sowing directly or for planting last-minute spring-flowering bulbs now, although in temperate or subtropical climates you can still give it a bash. But if you can’t, make a note of the following suggestions in your gardening diary when planning for colour next summer and autumn, as many can be sown (or planted) in early spring as well.

Shirley Poppies

• Cultivars derived from the European wild field poppy (Papaver rhoeas), which produces stunning blooms with crinkled papery petals in vivid colours.
• The seed can be sown directly in autumn or early spring.

Nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus)

• Depending on the cultivar, flowers can be different shades of orange to nearly red and are open and funnel-shaped with a spur on the underside.
• Leaves are rounded like those of a waterlily and edible with a peppery taste.

Cape scabious (Scabiosa africana)

• Mounds of velvety evergreen leaves with strong stems up to 1m high, dividing into many side branches with mauve pincushion flowers at their tips.
• Great one to sow or plant in a fynbos garden.

READ MORE: Find out more about Papaver rhoeas here!

The Self-Seeding Flowers

Great characteristics of many self-seeding flowers and plants are a tolerance for any type of soil, a no-fuss profile with vigorous growth, great quantities of flowers that attract a wide array of pollinators, and the production of copious quantities of seeds that will drop onto the soil at the end of the flowering season, relying on natural seasonal changes to germinate and grow again. Using self-sowing plants to fill gardens is an old practice and a natural result of a previous year’s purchase. Some of the plants might overdo it a bit, but if you have seedlings coming up like the hairs on a dog’s back, simply thin them out a bit and pop the surplus onto the compost heap.

Love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena)

• Tall annual (50cm) with lovely bright green ferny foliage protecting stems with fluffy flowers in shades of blue.
• Interesting seed pods add another attraction.

Blue daisy bush (Felicia amelloides)

• Eye-catcher with striking sky-blue flowers with sunny yellow centres, carried well above the foliage.
• Can be planted at any time and readily available.

Galjoen flower (Lobelia valida)

• Sky-blue flowers densely packed at the tips of long stems and fresh, light green leaves
• Flowers from November to April and usually sold already in flower at nurseries specialising in indigenous plants.

Naturalising bulbous plants

They can be natives or exotic plants that reseed and spread underground when thriving in a landscape and growing season. Many of our indigenous spring-flowering bulbs don’t mind staying in the soil during their dormant period in summer after flowering, to multiply, provided they are not over-watered and have been planted in well-draining soil. It is not too late to plant the following five, of which three are in bulb form and two can be purchased as growing plants.

Snowflakes (Leucojum aestivum)

• These bulbs grow naturally in marshes and shady woodlands, where they naturalise after a few years to appear in large swathes every spring.
• The white bell-shaped flowers with green dots at the apex are softly scented.

Wild foxglove (Ceratotheca triloba)

• This wild and tall annual flowers in summer and autumn. It has sparsely flowered spikes of white or mauve foxglove-like flowers.
• Commonly found in the summer-rainfall areas and always spectacular colour at the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens.
• A favourite of carpenter and honey bees.

Grape hyacinth (Muscari)

Muscari bulbs, with their foxy blue flower spikes that are pleasantly scented, re-seed readily, and the bulbs multiply fast too, to form colonies of spring colour in sun or semi-shade. Very high frost tolerance.

READ MORE: Bulbous Plants

Chincherinchee (Ornithogalum thyrsoides)

• Indigenous bulbs that produce beautiful white or creamy white flowers in dense racemes from late spring to summer.
• Very popular, long-lasting cut flowers. The long flower stalks are sometimes placed in food dyes so that the flowers take on the colour of the dye.
• Since they flower a bit later than other spring-flowering bulbs, you can still plant a bold patch of them.

Common arum lily (Zantedeschia aethiopica)

• The arum lilies form large colonies in marshy areas, tolerating coastal conditions as well as misty mountain grassland at high altitudes in sun or shade.
• They can be evergreen or deciduous, depending on habitat and rainfall. If watered regularly in a garden they will stay evergreen with lush and dark green leaves with an arrowhead shape.
• The main flowering flush is August to January with the odd bloom at other times. The spadix of each flower produces fleshy seeds that are loved by birds and are also dispersed by them.

Falling stars (Crocosmia aurea)

• A hardy and deciduous perennial bulbous plant with fans of sword-like leaves and bright orange star-shaped flowers from January to June.
• Apart from volunteer seedlings popping up when dropped by birds, they will also clump lushly and can be divided every few years.