Texan Gardener and Traveler: Poppy story


Early days of loving this flower

This is the story of a love hate relationship with one flower.

This is the wildflower not the oriental. Officially named Corn Poppy, Flanders Poppy and several others.

When I started my south side of the house gardens, I was still in the wildflower mode. We have half an acre that used to be filled with flowers in the spring, summer and fall. There were blue periods,yellow periods and then lavender.

They are not so plentiful now. Weather, critters and over spray from a lawn (no weeds) fanatic neighbor have all seriously affected the flowers. At one time we were blessed with a field of more than a dozen types of wildflowers.

I still love these bright red clusters of flowers in spring. I had the mistaken idea I could incorporate the clusters in my new gardens. They are very easy to transplant. They bloom like mad for over a month. This is usually around the time the bluebonnets are blooming. They also have tiny seeds that blow all over and reseed quite prolifically.


Beginnings of garden

Corn poppy, California poppy

In my mind I could see the gardens layout.

I had a "shape" of the future layout in my head for a long time. So, I laid a path, planted a Ravenna Grass and started moving flowers around from other parts of the yard.


The lavender plant is a very aggressive wild verbena

I accumulated plants and kept them going in pots of all kinds for future transplanting.

The grassy area behind the flowers is where the wildflowers were. Now, the pervasive grass has taken over and gets taller than most of the poor wildflowers.

Taken April 2011 before everything is in full flower


April 2011, this is the same area as the earlier photos

As you can see, the poppies are scattered all over. They are so pretty that I do try to keep a few blooming and then pull them out before they go to seed. It is hard to yank out a lovely flower, but the tiny seeds seem to germinate from previous years anyway.


This was a hard lesson to learn. I am not proud of this picture. After pulling out all the beautiful poppies, this is what was left. The poppies grew so large they shaded the cone flower seeds and no new cone flowers is the result. I am still struggling to have a garden full of cone flowers.