Please share with me your easy self-seeding flower recommendations!

[DarlingCoffee]

I’m looking to add some more plants to my garden but would love to grow more plants that self seed and naturalise. We have fairly heavy clay soil in our garden:

please can you share which varieties have worked well for you?

many thanks!

Oh I'd love to know this too - following with interest!

Ox eye daisies, Pulmonaria, Cyclamen, Sisyrinchium, Winter aconite all spread nicely without being horribly invasive in my clay soil.

Me too.

Honesty, goes everywhere.

Calendula, hyacinths, snapdragon, lavender, lupins, parsley, wild geraniums, echinacea purpura, snowdrops

Verbena bonariensis, toadflax, forget me nots, fennel, honesty, angelica, feverfew and foxgloves are my best self seeders.

Edit: also clay soil.

Forget me bots, Honesty, verbena bonariensis, hardy geraniums.

Campanula, and Aquilegia both have pretty flowers and spread well. Nigella - love in a mist - seeds a little too well.

Ohh, I didn't know verbena self seeded. I will be on the lookout for seedlings.

In my garden - hellebores, astrantia, geranium, sage, stock, foxgloves.

... and sweet william, snapdragons and poppies.

Alchemilla mollis, nasturtiums.

Would you also consider plants that grow into big clumps that you can then divide and spread around? Chinese lanterns, grape hyacinths, Japanese anemones for example.

Great thread! Saving this one for when I get out there.

I've just been googling this. I'm going to buy some gladiolus byzantium - although I don't know how best to protect the seedlings from slugs.

I stayed in a holiday cottage near Aviemore and their lupins had LOTS of seedlings. The seeds were literally being "fired" out of the pods as they burst open.

Hollyhocks in my garden, but only on the sunny and barren side!

Also forget me nots, Verbena Bonsariensis, Love in the Mist all self seed very readily.

Nasturtiums and honesty to some extent but I give them a helping hand by collecting and re-sowing.

Grape hyacinths! Although the wee blue bastards can get out of control if left unattended. Work particularly nicely with tete a tete narcissus.

California poppies.

We also have clay. Aquiliga, valerian, vinca and hypericum all grow and self seed in our garden.

Flax (Linux) - flowers for ages and self seeds.
Lychnis Coronaria - buy one plant from the garden centre and you’ll always have it, self seeds freely but the seedlings are very easy to identify to either pull up or replant elsewhere. A brilliant pop of colour. Excellent as a small cut flower and the petals seek the light in your vase and turn to face it - weird!

Clay soil.

Clay soil. Every spring my garden is a beautiful blue shimmering haze from all the self seeded forget me nots, those die off to show off a sea of yellow/white poached egg plants that the bees absolutely love. Then it's time for my californian poppies to dance, mixed with bedding plants such as snapdragons, nicotinia and nemesia which slowly end up with cosmos pushing through for late summer. Can't wait

EDIT - Agree with pp, aquilegia and toadflax are also great, forgot about those as they aren't in great clumps but more scattered. Beautiful plants.

Marigolds, poppies

Interesting to see verbena mentioned. I planted three mature plants, they all died first winter in my cold wet soil. How are everyone's seeding around? Shall I try again? Same bed and I planted 100 Alliums, they flowered for a couple years, all have now disappeared. So sad.

Granny’s bonnet and alliums have self seeded well in my garden.

It does depend i guess, self seeding is trickier with heavy clay I think. In my front garden it's absolute solid clay and I'm not risking bulbs in there until I've had cheap biennials and tough things (lady's mantle and Japanese anemone) breaking it up a bit. I think bulbs might rot. But I've still ahd a bit of self seeding in there. The first verbena I planted (in decent improved clay soil) died, but the ones I grew from seed the following year self seeded especially into cracks in the patio and I could relocate them.

Not the most focused answer but my main strategy is don't spend too much (grow from seed and other peoples divisions) keep planting stuff to break up the heavy clay and don't expect self seeding, just welcome it when it happens!

Thanks. We have weird soil here, fab top layer, which I add to every year, then mixed clay and flint!

Roses love it, hardy geraniums, hellebores, foxgloves, campanula, big poppies, Spanish bluebells (grrrr hate them), and weirdly Echinops.