I admit I'm a lousy gardener. I can't keep up with the weeding and can't even recognize what to pull and what to leave. I've come up with a plan for next season to help, but that's another forum subject and I'll post there. Most of my weeds are edible and/or medicinal. That is one good thing about them. Another thing is that they attract beneficial insects to my garden. The spiders, ground beetles, millipedes, etc. are sooo happy in my garden and so are the bees. I've got somebody's honeybees enjoying my wild aster along with the bumble bees. I think I will keep those and the creeping charlie and get rid of the mugwort and ragweed. So, a helpful hint for New Englanders: Wild Aster, Creeping Charlie, clover and Dandelions are definitely keepers. The rest can go. I do plan on planting Evening Primrose, Butterfly Milkweed, Forget-Me-Not, Purple Coneflower and Beebalm. Those should finish the job of attracting all of the beneficial insects as well as nourish and support the endangered ones. I welcome your thoughts and ideas.
skip the evening primrose. they are ugly plants. nor will you see pretty flowers on them. they don't have them.
I have Evening primroses in my garden and they have lovely yellow blooms. The flowers do however open late in the day which is why some people don't like them. They are tall plants as you can see here:
Evening primrose is a weed here that you can buy in the garden-centre’s. I like the blooms and usually leave two or three volunteers to stand each season. There is another type which I find especially lovely...well, there are several types of Oenothera actually; there are colours other than yellow. The one that I like is the Oenothera biennis. It has a more slender habitus and has a sort of purply-red colour up near the blooms and sometimes along the stems.
When they finally did start blooming, I didn't mind them, but I don't see much interest from the pollinators or birds. However, I do see that it has important medicinal properties. It's a keeper.
Well Beeks, the primrose is not for the pollinators primarily, its for me. Chuckle. You wouldn’t see the pollinators probably because its only the nocturnal pollinators that visit it.
That makes sense. The little wasps love my carrot flowers. I might let one go to seed each year and pick the rest.
I am not in the city but my neighbors are unhappy that I don't remove all of the weeds. I still let them grow where they don't bother anybody. The lawn has lots of clover, dandelions, and wild carrots. There is endless buzzing during bloom season, all types of bees and pollinators. I also let oregano and cilantro bloom. Bees love those. Next year I will also have big patches of annual flowers. Zinnias, marigolds, four o'clocks, bachelors buttons, poppies mostly. They like this area. I decided not to grow breadseed poppies because I don't know if they are legal here.
