Flower bouquets typically include seed pods. Would you use their beauty in your garden? Many flowers look better after sowing. These multipurpose plants are attractive in spring and summer and yield exquisite seed pods when done.
1. Starflower
Starflowers, also called drumstick flowers and mourning brides, mature into light blue scabiosa flowers in 75–95 days and can be cut fresh. Their thin stems may need staking in full sun. Place them around an annual garden's back fence or borders. Transplanting is advised.
2. Common Milkweed
Exquisite milkweed flowers can grow anywhere, are the larvae's only food supply for monarch butterflies, and generate exquisite seed pods. After flowers bloom, huge horn-like seed pods develop.
3. Love-In-A-Mist
This is one of the most unusual annual blooms. Like fennel, this nigella blooms in cream, pink, and blue flowers with thin stems and wispy foliage. Thread-like bracts protrude from their centres.
4. False Indigo
True and genuine false indigo blooms from April to June with stunning blue-violet flowers on long, spiky stalks. This perennial adds height to cutting or cottage gardens and fence lines. Give plants plenty of sun to avoid legginess.
5. Spotted Touch-Me-Not
This tall annual natural wildflower has vivid golden and orangish-red cornucopia-shaped blooms with spots and big, teethed leaves. When touched, spotted touch-me-not seed pods rupture, hence their name.
6. Greater Quaking Grass
This tall ornamental grass is beautiful year-round. Mature blades are light to medium green. Drying turns the blades straw-gold. Easily grown and drought-tolerant, greater quaking grass is resilient.
7. Garden Angelica
The herbaceous biennial wild celery or Norwegian angelica is planted for its tasty stems and roots. As a carrot family member, it resembles an active firework or umbrella like Queen Anne's lace and Ammi Dara.
8. Teasel
Starting teasel from seed is easy and best done outside. After establishment, it's deer- and drought-resistant. The cone's purple blossoms, which last roughly a month from bottom to top, attract pollinators in summer and autumn.
9. Lupine
Lupine has vibrant, pea-like flowers on stiff spikes, making it one of the most beautiful spring bloomers. They feed spring pollinators and returning birds and look great in mass or with tulips.
10. Chinese Lantern
This plant spreads quickly, so choose its planting spot carefully. Growing it in pots away from manicured garden beds and veggies is encouraged. In spring, dig up and divide rhizomes to prevent overgrowth.
Also see
10 Self-Seeding Annuals for Effortless Garden Colour