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5/22/2023 11:47:38 AM

The Colorful Unpredictablity of Wildflowers

Simonne Roy, Artist / Comment on this
Topics: Gardens | Inspiration | Plein air painting

Poppies & Pods, oil painting. Sold.

Ok, I admit it. I love goofing off in the garden and I love experiments, especially when they turn out beautifully.

Every year I grow something just for fun. One year all my friends got loofah sponges for the holidays. Another year they got birdhouse gourds. There were the purple potatoes (delicious), the Three Sisters garden (the deer loved it), the great artichoke experiment (got one artichoke), the "growing peanuts in the northeast" experiment (got two peanuts), the potimarron seeds from France that did well...

Lately my experiments have been with wildflowers. Initially the goal was to help the bees and butterflies but now I’m having so much fun painting the flowers I can't stop planting more each year.

My first wildflower bed was grown from a random mix of seeds I had been given over the years (thanks friends and seed companies). I drew a large circle in the grass in a part of the yard that wasn’t very visible (in case the experiment would fail). I added compost, planted the seeds, and let nature do the rest. All I did was pull out the obvious weeds.

The start of the first round wildflower bed

A few months later it became a magnificent “accident” I couldn’t recreate if I tried. There were blue and yellow flowers that dominated, with a few reds and pinks poking up randomly.

"Backyard Wildfowers" oil painting, sold

The following year I turned another patch of grass into a wildflower bed.

This time I purchased a seed mix with about twenty flowers listed. The dominant flowers were the poppies, and when those were done, the poppy pods were as beautiful as the flowers. The green pods looked like something out of science fiction – alien creatures? spaceships?

"Poppies & Pods" oil painting, 8 x 24," sold

The following year, I watched for the poppies to return, but instead, the asclepias (milkweed) took over, growing into full maturity with bright orange flowers in their second year

Asclepias is an important food source for monarch butterflies so it was a happy surprise.

"Asclepias" oil painting, 8 x 16," sold

Last summer, with more confidence, I created a wildflower bed right down the middle of the yard, visible from my home gallery window.

I planted flax and poppy seeds to recreate the succession of blue (flax) flowers followed by red poppies that had captured my attention during the spring of 2019 in France. (Read Inspiration from French Fields of Blue). It was a fine flower bed and looked especially good when backlit by the sun.