In praise of the garden volunteers

Some of the garden’s most striking scenes are the result of selective weeding of volunteers, plants that show up each year without effort on the gardener’s part. Two examples are growing this summer in Marjorie’s garden: Shirley poppy (Papaver rhoeas), a self-sowing annual, and mullein (Verbascum thapsus), a self-sowing biennial.

Several autumns ago, Marjorie scattered a handful of tiny Shirley poppy seeds, a gift from the garden of a friend, in a small corner of a perennial bed. The seeds germinated the next spring and the resulting plants grew to 3 feet in height, slender stems clad with blue-green leaves. In July, each stem was topped with a blossom, a single row of pink petals the texture of crinkled tissue paper.

These first plants scattered their own seed and the next spring there were poppy seedlings growing throughout the garden, easy to recognize by their unique foliage. Most were weeded out, a few allowed to grow and blossom.

Three poppies are growing among the strawberries this summer, another winding through the branches of a blueberry shrub, a few more circling the compost bin. And there are still poppies in the corner of the perennial bed, although they are stunted, a result of tardiness in thinning the young seedlings.

Throughout the day, these few poppies are among the first plants to catch the eye as you stroll through the garden. I have been in the garden at first light to watch the poppies greet the day, to see them swaying with the slightest breeze, the low-angled light casting stamen-shadows inside curved petals. At dusk the flowers glow, reluctant to give up the last rays of sunlight.

We don’t know the origin of the mullein in Marjorie’s garden, but every summer we rogue out most of the volunteer seedlings. Only a few are allowed to continue growing vegetatively through their first summer, waiting to flower until the next year. Such is the nature of biennials.

Unlike the slender poppy, a mullein plant in its second summer is a 6-foot-tall woolly mammoth. Densely hairy frost-green leaves clasp the lower two-thirds of the main stem, those nearest the ground more than a foot in length. The upper third of the stem is a stout spike of 1-inch yellow flowers that open sequentially, bottom to top.

Although a single mullein plant can produce more than 150,000 seeds, only a few will germinate and even fewer will make it to the second year. Mullein seedlings are not strong competitors, thriving only in the margins of the garden and along the bed edges. This summer we have four flowering plants on the edge of the strawberry beds and a few selected first-year plants scattered around the vegetable and small fruit beds.

The four mullein plants stand in strong contrast to the surrounding low-growing strawberries. Their flowers bring native bees and other pollinators to the garden; their late-summer seed heads will bring goldfinches. On summer mornings the large felted leaves covered with dew are an arresting sight.

This year we are growing another self-sowing annual, pot marigold (Calendula). Next spring we will decide which calendulas to pull and which to nourish, striving for a touch of color scattered among the permanent plantings.

Send queries to Gardening Questions, P.O. Box 418, Ellsworth 04605, or to rmanley@ptc-me.net. Include name, address and telephone number.