Foxgloves reseed, return each year

Foxgloves bring a cottage garden charm to any garden – and they come up year after year.

Foxgloves are not perennials, but biennials, and, like other biennial flowers, they die in their second year.

But within the seedpod that follows each foxglove flower are thousands of seeds, each almost as fine as dust. As the plants begin to die, the seeds are scattered, then soon grow to form rosettes of leaves, leaves that are woolly and surprisingly tough when you consider the dainty seeds from which they originated.

The next year, beautiful spires, three feet high and studded with thimble-shaped, pale purple flowers, rise from the center of the rosettes. And so on, year after year.

Now is a good time to get plants started for a show next year, and for years to come. Perhaps you know someone who grows foxgloves; tap them on the shoulder and ask for some seed pods. Or just buy a packet of foxglove seeds.

After you have the plants once, you should never have to plant again because the plants self-sow all over the place. In fact, your only job in the future will be to get rid of excess plants.

If you don’t like the idea of plants – even pretty flowers – hopping about the garden each year according to their whims, there are perennial foxgloves, and they stay where you plant them. Yellow foxglove is one such plant, with large, brown spotted, yellow flowers. The spikes of rusty foxglove soar to six feet, with fuzzy, rust-colored flowers along their length. Strawberry foxglove is notable not only for its summerlong show of strawberry blossoms, but also for its attractive, lush green foliage.