Self-sowing plants are good at reducing garden workload

QI am trying to think of ways to reduce maintenance in my garden this winter. The only measure I’ve been able to think of so far is to plant flowers that will selfsow to recreate their show of colour each year. Is this feasible? I’d appreciate any ideas you may have.

AThere are many ways to reduce work in a garden. I’ve begun, this fall, to widen pathways in my large back garden. This creates a more spacious environment and brings a slight reduction in planting areas that need regular maintenance.

I’ve converted some side areas of the garden, where shade and encroaching tree roots have made gardening difficult, into pleasant, no-work sites by clearing the spaces, laying down cardboard and layers of newspaper, and covering them over with wood shavings

Your idea of self-sowing plants is an excellent one.

I recall one year when I never got around to planting a plot in a side area of the back garden. Because of previous plantings there, that plot developed into a mass of bright yellow and orange calendula, tall peony poppies in many colours, and borage plants with their cucumber-scented leaves and small blue flowers that are lovely scattered on salads, along with calendula petals.

Sweet alyssum faithfully self-sows. Foxglove, larkspur, and cosmos are more good self-sowers.

Beware volunteer plant “thugs” that can become weedy nuisances. Chinese lantern plants can become a problem. Never plant goutweed (bishop’s weed, Aegopodium). It’s a spreading menace, suitable only for pots, and then only if it is kept from forming seeds.