They are adorable. They are sweet. They are willing to grow in gutters and in the cracks between rocks. Forget them, I’m told. Forget those charming little forget-me-nots. They aren’t as guileless as they look.
In my neighborhood, forget-me-nots grow in lovely clouds of blue wherever a bit of water has collected — at the foot of a shady slope, alongside a creek, out from under a fence.
The trouble is, our local forget-me-nots are not local. They are not from here and they are invasive. Like every other living thing, they have an agenda — to thrive. Left to their dainty devices, they will crowd out the natives: the mug wort and monkey flower, the soap root and bee plant.
This spring, a flock of forget-me-nots found its way into my front yard. The weeds — for they are weeds — spread themselves about with abandon, springing up where they pleased, bullying the the coral bells and columbine and stealing the show from the azaleas and irises.
Pretty and (seemingly) demure though this tiny blue flower might be, an invading flock of forget-me-nots must be met head-on. You must rip the pretty little things up by the roots or they and their progeny will take the place over.
And that’s what the gardeners did at my house this week. They yanked out the forget-me-nots, every last one of them. They filled a leaf bag with the sweet blue things and took them off to flower heaven.
Forget Those Charming Little Forget-Me-Nots
Before the gardeners arrived, I took a minute to yank up a few of the offending plants on my own. As I did, the memory of a patch of snapdragons deep in my gardening past — 2009 — came to mind.
Unlike the forget-me-nots of 2025, the snapdragons of 2009 were well-behaved innocents, domesticated. Their only crime was their color — a deep bloody maroon that didn’t fit with the color scheme I had in mind for my front yard.
This is what I wrote about those snapdragons back in 2009:
Is It OK to Uproot a Plant Just Because it’s Ugly?
By Barbara Falconer Newhall, June 2009
I don’t like the snapdragons growing in my front yard. Their color, somewhere between scarlet and maroon, gets on my nerves. I don’t like scarlet. I like maroon even less.
Those plants in my front yard are innocent. They are doing what they are supposed to do. They’re sending down roots, sucking up water, and shooting stems toward the sky.
The stems are dotted with dragon-faced blossoms that, like snapdragons everywhere and always, invite the passerby to give them a squeeze and make the dragon’s mouth open in a roar.
Snapdragons Being Snapdragons
They are snapdragons being snapdragons. If I rip them out of the ground while they’re still in full bloom, am I an assassin? They might be ugly, but they are alive.
When I spotted the six-packs of baby snapdragons at the nursery, all I could see were a few pinkish buds. They looked good to me. But now those tender buds have turned maroon on me. Their color shouts in my face. The lavender and bacopa, growing modestly nearby, go unseen.
What to Do With an Ailing Potted Plant?
My mother, who turned 92 on Wednesday, has shelves and tables of potted plants growing with fervor out on her patio. One plant, a philodendron, is not doing so well. It has only a few leaves, most of them dead or yellowing.
“Do I throw it out?” she asks. “It doesn’t look very good.”
I think of my snapdragons. And my mother, for that matter. She doesn’t look very good.
I think of my cypress tree. When Peter was little, we found out he was allergic to cypress.
“Hmm,” I said to the pediatrician. “We have a cypress tree growing in our backyard a few feet from the house – and Peter’s bedroom.”
“Cut it down,” the doctor said.
An Allergenic Tree — Chop It Down?
Jon and I conferred. Our cypress was massive — five stories tall — and older than both of us put together. It was a magnificent tree, timeless, a steady presence at our house. Its branches had grown over and around our deck, so that you could go out there at any time, day or night, stand inside that tree and forget where you were in time and space.
No way were Jon and I going to get rid of that cypress tree. Peter would have to take antihistamines. Or grow out of his allergies. Or we’d move to another house.
Peter outgrew the allergies. The cypress tree, as self-sufficient as ever, lives on.
As for the scraggly, deadish philodendron on my mother’s patio, was there hope for it? My mother and I couldn’t come to a decision. It lives on.
The snapdragons that so offended my eye? I ripped them out.
More about the state of my front yard garden in 2024 at “It’s Spring and My Garden Looks Dreadful. Here’s Why.” As for my back and side yard gardens, go to “There’s a Pollinator in My Pollinator Garden.”
I would like some of those forget-me-nots to spread out in our back yard
in the places where there is nothing to choke out.
They are pretty, but they will spread all over the place!
I loved this post. Now I’m wondering if your decision to retain the cypress, and thus the allergens, actually helped Peter grow out of his allergies faster due to exposure. Good job, parents!
So true. Allergens are a mystery. It’s not at all clear to me that Peter had much in the way of allergies.