Flower gardening is rewarding, but it can be a lot of work, too. Having a garden full of flowers to sit and enjoy and to cut for indoor arrangements is a sure source of enjoyment.
Did you know? Science has proven this to be so! Studies show that fresh flowers in the home make people happier!
Jump to:
- Making Lighter Work of Growing Annual Flowers and Cutting Flowers
- How Do Annual Flowers Reseed if They’re Not Perennials?
- 20 Annual Flowers that Readily Reseed
- Setting Up a Self-Seeding Flower Meadow or Bed
- When to plant self-seeding flower beds
- Reseeding May Depend on Location, Climate, and Conditions
- Don’t Be the Reason Your Self-Seeding Plants Don’t Succeed
- Tips for helping flowers reseed and come back year after year
- Reseeding Relies on Dry, Dead Heads
Making Lighter Work of Growing Annual Flowers and Cutting Flowers
Many of the brightest garden flowers and the flowers that make the best-cut flowers for bouquets and arrangements are annual flowers. That means they’re even more work, because they have to be replanted every gardening year.
But there is a way to have your garden and enjoy it, too, and to be able to fit it in amongst all the other garden tasks and pressures of life: Grow annual flowers that reseed themselves!
If you grow flowers that are known to reliably reseed themselves, they’ll do the planting for you. They need only a little maintenance from you to do it.
How Do Annual Flowers Reseed if They’re Not Perennials?
Perennials are plants that lie dormant or plants that survive the harsh conditions and weather of winter.
Annuals that reseed are a bit different. They are still annuals in the sense that they complete their life cycle in a single growing season. They are also annuals because they are killed off completely by cold winter weather. In other words, they don’t go dormant and come back next spring.
The only way to have them again another year is for them to grow new plants entirely from seed.
So, how can an annual flower do this in a zone or location where it can’t survive as a perennial?
It’s simple. Part of their life cycle is to set seed. The plants grow, flower, get pollinated, and then start forming mature seeds. The seeds dry as the flowers die back. The show might be over, but the life is not. There’s lots of life left in those little seeds!
As the stems die and the seed heads dry out, the seed head falls apart, or shatters, and then the seed falls to the ground. They’ll stay there and survive the winter, waiting to sprout and grow.
Most seeds are well-equipped and naturally protected to sprout after a period of months. They sprout in response to periods of cold and warm, moisture, etc.
When the time is right, the seeds know what to do, and they’ll sprout to life, starting the cycle anew.
If you’ve ever had “volunteer” plants in your garden or in a compost pile, that’s essentially the same natural process of self-seeding. (Like that random pumpkin that grows better than any you planted, or those random sunflowers or tomatoes that pop up where last year’s rows were).
As long as the flowers are repeating this cycle and aren’t killed by being crowded out or by your inadvertent gardening practices, their ability to reseed will continue for as long as they are left to complete the cycle.
They can keep going for years!
20 Annual Flowers that Readily Reseed
So, what are some good flowers to plant that will easily set seed and reseed themselves in the coming year? Here's a list of 20 tried and true favorites!
- Amaranth – throws a lot of seed, so it has a high ability to reproduce itself
- Alyssum – good low-growing border plant, too
- Chinese Forget me Nots – these are tenacious, pretty little plants with small periwinkle purple flowers. The bees and pollinators LOVE them! They’re very hard to kill and even withstand some cutting and mowing!
- California Poppies -- grow to about 12 to 18 inches and reseed easily in many types of gardens and in a variety of locations
- Cosmos – tender annuals, but they set and drop good seed; come in a range of colors; a tall plant that nicely takes up some space and makes a statement
- Batchelor Buttons – quite cold hardy, so you’ll be able to enjoy them for much of the garden season
- Daisies – reseed well when weed competition is kept limited; a natural reseeding wildflower
- Black Eyed Susans – similar to daisies, and some varieties may survive as perennials
- Snapdragons – another good, long-lasting flower that will withstand some frost and cold for longer color
- Sunflowers – the only difficulty with sunflowers is that birds and wildlife love them, so you are sometimes competing with them for the seed; plant plenty, and there will be plenty to go around; it helps if you make a point of rubbing some seed off to fall to the ground to beat the birds to some of the seed
- Echinacea/Cornflowers -- grow an interesting, attractive, large seed head full of many seeds, which then opens and drops seed to the ground; birds like them, too, but there is usually enough to go around
- Calendula/Pot Marigold – added bonus of being deer and rabbit-resistant!
- Coreopsis – flowers summer through frosts for long-lasting color; continuous bloomers, especially if deadheaded, but for reseeding, you’ll need to leave later-season blooms to set the seed
- Borage – also considered an herb, it has purple-blue flowers that taste like cucumbers
- Love-in-a-Mist (Nigella) -- a fun little flower that lends interest and texture to the garden bed
- Larkspur -- a cool weather annual flower, it blooms early in the summer so make sure you leave some to go to seed
- Morning Glories -- in some areas, especially warmer climates, morning glory can become aggressive, so watch your plants, and if they’re starting to become problematic, deadhead most of the flowers and let only a few go to seed
- Sweet Peas – sweet peas are very cold hardy and are often the earliest flowering plants; they don’t usually live as perennials, but they do reseed well (though there are some perennial varieties, they are less aromatic)
- Verbena – Tall Verbena is considered one of the most reliable self-seeding annuals
- Zinnia – zinnias are often more successful as self-seeders in warmer zones, but they do flower prolifically, can grow large and bushy, and throw a lot of seed; they grow well as annuals almost everywhere; to hedge your bets, try a combination of self-seeding and saving some seed heads and then cast them in the spring if you don’t think the zinnias are returning
Setting Up a Self-Seeding Flower Meadow or Bed
There are many ways to design a self-seeding flower bed or meadow. If you like a cleaner, more organized look, you will want to start transplants or sow seeds by type in specified areas.
The seeds don't usually drop too far from the plant, so they will stay in the general area of growth. But you do need to recognize that there is a wildness to self-seeding garden beds. You should be prepared to accept some mixing and wild-like nature. Also know that birds and wildlife may help you spread some seed!
If you don't like the look of random wild seeding, you can also control reseeding plants by controlling what goes to seed and how much seed you let it set. Weeding out what you don’t want in a specific space is an option, too.
It is also an option to keep one type of reseeding flower per bed or per section of the bed.
Wildflower mixes are often your best bet for establishing self-seeding gardens and flower meadows because they are designed with reseeding and regrowing in mind.
When to plant self-seeding flower beds
Self-seeding beds can be planted in the fall or the spring.
In the fall, you will want to prepare the bed and broadcast seed with the intention of it lying dormant until spring (like it will in future reseedings).
If it doesn’t have time to develop flowers and seeds, you need to plant the seed late enough that it will stay dormant as seed – after frosts and before a hard freeze. To help gauge this, see when other flowers are brown and dropping seeds in your area.
Another option is to start your bed in the spring, which will give the plants plenty of time to complete their life cycle and spread seed.
To get a jump and let your plants get ahead of weeds and competition, starting from transplants is even better.
Reseeding May Depend on Location, Climate, and Conditions
These are all reliable reseeding annual flowers, and if you plant several of these, you are sure to establish a garden that is capable of reseeding itself.
That said, different locations will be more or less successful with specific types of reseeding flowers. Try many varieties, and don’t stress if some don’t succeed. Over the course of a couple of years, you’ll see what does best as a self-seeder.
Don’t Be the Reason Your Self-Seeding Plants Don’t Succeed
We are often the reason that plants that can reseed themselves don’t. This may explain why you might find plants on this list that you’ve never seen reseed for you before.
Weeding, tilling, planting, and redesigning, along with thorough and diligent deadheading and pruning, often keeps plants from reseeding or growing to adult, mature plants.
Of these, weeding is probably the biggest culprit. We often weed out flowers without even knowing they’re not really “weeds”!
Tips for helping flowers reseed and come back year after year
- Don't cut all the flowers!
- Give new spring flowers time to come up
- Cut out weeds so they don’t outcompete your reseeding flowers
- Take care not to pull out wanted flower seedlings and seeds
- Do some seed-spreading yourself in the fall to beat the birds
- Control the more aggressive self-seeders (for example, by cutting more for vases or cutting out some before it all goes to seed)
Reseeding Relies on Dry, Dead Heads
The biggest thing to remember is this – flowers can’t reseed if you don’t let them set seed, and if you don’t let them keep it!
So while we usually like clean and kept gardens, that’s not the way to go with self-seeders and reseeding flowers. Keep this in mind, and remember to let those spaces do their thing in the spring!
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