Are you tired of playing nursemaid to flowers? Work and planning is unnecessary with flowers that self-sow, replanting themselves from seed every year. Count among self-sowers some annuals, biennials and perennials.

One favorite, twinkling up at you each spring with its starry, white-eyed, blue flowers, is forget-me-not. Nurture and plant it once, and a new crop appears each spring.

Also reliably coming back are calendulas, also known as pot marigolds.

There’s ferny-foliaged cosmos, as well as the old-fashioned bush balsam, with red, pink or white blossoms that resemble miniature roses.

Your job is, in late spring, to pull some out where they are overcrowded, and to pull all out where they are not wanted.

You may sense that self-sowing flowers walk a fine line between being garden plants and weeds.

Foxglove may be too freely self-sowing in your garden.

Nicotiana is also very free in this sense. But you may want to keep it around anyway so as not to miss out on its irresistible nocturnal fragrance.

Even charming, dainty flowers such as chamomile and Johnny-jump-up can be frighteningly prolific in an environment that is too congenial.

Be aware that offspring will not necessarily be identical to each other or replicas of their parent — definitely not if you begin with hybrids. But the resulting variability and reversion to wilder forms lend a relaxed, friendly air.
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