Love In the Mist or Alien in a Fog? Nigella Flower

In a garden version of War of the Worlds, this is Hanna reporting to you live from her front porch.

THE ALIENS HAVE LANDED! THE ALIENS HAVE LANDED!

Prepare for the end. Get the guns. Grab the kids and the container plants and report to the nearest fallout shelter for further instructions.

Oh… wait… That is just nigella or, as its close friends like to call it, love in the mist. Silly me, it reseeds itself every year, even more faithfully than the snapdragons and violas but not quiet as enthusiastically as cleome so it is never a bother.

Nigella is one of my favorite annuals and I am a little surprised that it gets left out of the same old, same old annual selections found at most nurseries. Then again, with its reseeding reliability, maybe most nurseries feel that it is a money pit since people will not return year after year to buy it.

Then again, maybe the fact that is does reseed so well makes it undesirable to the more fussy gardening types who like their annuals to stay firmly where they planted them waiting patiently to die come the frost. Wandering annuals may not have a place in most home gardens.

Or maybe just the nigella’s bizarre look is too much for some people. The seed pods go against a graceful aesthetic attitude that most people have for flowers in their garden. Nigella is kind of like that rebel kid in high school that no one was sure whether they were just way too cool or one step away from taking out the principal.

Whatever the reason, this annual gets woefully neglected. Kid love them. If you have kids, I really recommend growing them for the kids. Even if you don’t have kids, you can make your garden just a little edgier by letting these oddballs loose in your beds.