Sometimes the power of nature is amazing to witness. At the same time, sometimes nature makes you scratch your head. What’s better than when a good plant decides to make an appearance into your garden. The white and blue plants below are volunteers in my garden, They are the Great Blue Lobelia, Lobelia siphilitica, and the Great White Lobelia, Lobelia siphilitica ‘Alba’.
I never planted them. They just decided to make my front foundations gardens their home. The crazy thing about these two plants are they are native to wet meadows, wetlands and river edges. My front foundation garden is not that. The garden is high and dry, full sun, compost over bank run gravel. Yes, Lobelia siphilitica is native to Connecticut but why would a wetland plant want to be in this environment? The first time I saw Lobelia on my property was across the garden on the edge of a hot gravel driveway. It was a single Great Blue Lobelia. The following year, a couple more plants seeded themselves. For the last couple of years, that patch hasn’t gotten any larger but it the plants did decide to jump 40-45′ to the area in front of the house. This new group started as a couple of plants and have grow to a small cluster. The picture about is the newest of 3 locations. As you can see, this newest group includes the white variety of Great Lobelia. Where they came from, I don’t know. This last group has also become the largest patch to date. The hysterical thing is this location is also on the edge of the driveway and on top of my septic tank where I’ve struggled to grow any plants over the last 25 years. Even plants known for their ironclad behaviors of surviving in hot and dry environments. And here you have it, a Connecticut native wetland plant thriving in the most inhospitable environment and thriving. The most interesting part of this story is that about 150′ away from this hot and dry garden, there is an environment that these plants would love. A wetland with full sun exposure. Although we have plenty of wetland plants growing in the wetland like Eupatorium, Iris and Verbena, I’ve never seen Lobelia in the place they are destined for.
