🐝🌻🐝🌻 Link to Bee and Forage Plants book mentioned in the video: amzn.to/4akww86 🐝🌻🐝🌻 🌾🌾🌾🌾 Learn about an other under loved native plant goldenrod in this video: th-cam.com/video/Zsq5yFsAU-Y/w-d-xo.html 🌾🌾🌾🌾 This video is NOT sponsored. Some product links are affiliate links which means if you buy something we'll receive a small commission.
I really dig your videos. Most of the videos I've seen do far are strictly East Coast varieties that all stop at Louisiana. As a native Texan trying to provide native habitat, pollen with focus on using plants that native bugs thrive on.... I've been left with questions of how to facilitate these outcomes. Any advice??
@@jerrellbevers6071 If you live in far eastern TX most of the info in the videos would apply, once you get into the more arid parts of the state everything is different. There is just too much difference between the eastern US (I use the Mississippi River valley as the line) and the west for me to be able to cover everything. Plus I live in the east and am familiar with it.
Violets are hated by the "perfect lawn" people. My neighbor in one side spends a fortune in treatments for these every year. I, and my other side neighbor, have violets and wildflowers growing all over our property! They are pretty, but I also didn't know how important they were until I saw your video. Keep sending out these great videos!
But too lazy to just pull them all figures. I heard that historically the perfect lawn was ppl wanting to show how they can afford to have unproductive land. Like they're ballers or smthn
The guy across the street from me is a professional landscaper. He's always out there mowing and edging and aerating and watering. Me, I'm killing off the grass and planting native ground-covers. His lawn still turns brown in summer, but mine stays green with very little work.
They taste great used as cooked greens in stir fry, salads, quiche. They also contain more iron than spinach. I have a backyard full of them and do not spray them.
If a seed catalog promoted a plant as "a short perennial groundcover that spreads, thrives even in dry shade under trees, beautiful blooms, and even edible"-people would throw money at them! I've never understood how something so lovely is thought to be a weed.
Exactly. But since they volunteer to come up everywhere a lot of people just see them as a common weed. Our yard is loaded with them, and fleabane, and a ton of other "weeds".
Thank you! One of my favorite quotes on violets: It’s the most visible beginning, this low blue flame in the woods. I think of it as a pilot light that ignites the entire burst of resurrection we call spring. - from Forest and Thicket by John Eastman
I used to pull them out, as if they were a weed, and then one day had an ‘ah-ha’ moment and realized that I had a free, vigorous, flowering ground cover that I should be leaving alone. So glad I came to that realization. The flowers are lovely and so very welcome in spring.
I'm slowly expanding a ground cover composed of violets (a few varieties), wild strawberry (fragaria virginiana), and purple poppy mallow (callirhoe involucrata). They weave between each other well and the latter two keep the ground covered when the violets hide for the winter. More videos showing love for violets would be welcome!
I just saw a Facebook post recently where the poster didn't even know they were violets and were trying every way possible to remove them from their lawn. It just makes me sad that people are so hellbent on having a "perfect" lawn that's good for nothing and destroys the environment.
I just dug most of them out of the areas that are mowed in my yard and put them in my garden so they can thrive. I left them in the areas that are not mowed since they will be fine there. I love the native violets!
We moved to a two story cabin in the middle of a 300 acre forest in rural Georgia last year. The bottom floor of the cabin is an oversized heated and air conditioned garage (which my husband loves of course!) and the living portion of the cabin is on the second story. You can access the house from a stairway inside the garage to the second floor, or by an outside stairway at the front of the cabin which leads to a wide balcony across the front of the cabin, and the front door. All of the soil on the property is tightly compacted red Georgia clay, including a flower bed that sits beneath the outside stairway in front of the lower balcony. I was pleasantly surprised when March came around to find the whole red clay bed covered in deep green foliage with beautiful dark purple violets. At first I thought they were pansies, because some of the flowers sort of had what looked like a pansy face. But I knew they had to be a wild species because the flowers were much smaller than your typical pansy. But after a while I figured out that they were actually wild violets. And they are absolutely beautiful, and now our balcony is guarded and protected by huge beautiful bumblebees. We were having problems with wasps wanting to build nests inside the ceiling fans on the balcony. And we love sitting out on the balcony with our coffee in the morning and in the evenings listening to the birds sing. And as the balcony is on the second story, it feels like you are sitting in a treehouse amongst the trees that surround our woodland cabin. But thanks to the bumblebees protecting their patch of wild violets on the lower level, we no longer have to worry about the wasps, as the bumblebees are very territorial and chase them all away. I absolutely love having that beautiful patch of wild violets in front of our cabin. And I love how well they grow in that red GA clay where nothing else will grow. And I am hoping we will soon see a lot of fritillary butterflies hatching after the caterpillars spin their cocoons and hatch out as beautiful butterflies. I so enjoyed hearing you talk about these underappreciated beautiful native wildflowers. Thank you!
With time and amending you can create a rich soil from that clay. Sometimes I wish I had just a little clay, my soil is so sandy it doesn’t hold moisture at all! Fun story of the bumbles protecting your space!
@@lilolmecj There are tons of native plants that will thrive in clay soil. What we as humans consider not great soil is quite normal in many areas and the plants are adapted to it. Much easier to go with the soil nature provides and plant the things that are adapted to it.
@@BackyardEcology I completely understand your point, and working with what your environment provides makes a lot of sense. I am speaking to the idea of wanting to grow some tomatoes and peppers which will grow more successfully in a less dense soil. I am close to Seattle, WA, and nearly anything will grow here. But I have to adjust some things to be successful. I am primarily speaking about my vegetable garden. The soil is very acidic, so calcium uptake is impaired, resulting in blossom end rot, which is r/t weakened cell walls which collapse as the fruit gets larger. My yard and general landscaping are all variants of wild growing plants. I started to say except my roses, but wild roses thrive here.
I agree that they’re excellent ground cover. Surprisingly, the common violets in my garden beds stay green through the worst summer droughts with no watering. Tough as nails.
A few years ago wild violets started popping up in our yard now our yard is have violets and half clover. When the violets stops blooming the clover starts. The best part is we don’t have to mow as often.
Violets are a great lawn alternative. While white clover isn't native, it isn't as bad when it comes to pollinator usage as many non-native plants and it works well in places that require a lawn to be under a certain height. Stay tuned for a video that will talk more about clover and other lawn flowers.
I live in Eastern Colorado, and up until a few years ago, I'd never run into a 'real' violet. Sure, the nurseries are packed with pansies and violas, johnny-jump-ups, etc, in a rainbow of colors, but I hadn't encountered a violet with any kind of scent to them. Because the Mountain Time Zone is home to some insane weather variability, as well as being on the arid side, with incredibly strong sunshine and lots of it, I presumed they would hard to find. And they are, because successfully growing them here means pampering them, mulching them, finding enough shade and water to give them a chance to root... and the early and late cold snaps of what passes for autumn and spring here are another obstacle to keeping them alive. However, one specialty nursery, at the end of the season, had about eight or nine pots of 'viola odorata' on the clearance tables. I snapped them up after sniffing one of the flowers and confirming it was the real thing, I planted them beneath a crabapple tree in a sheltered strip containing my spring bulbs, and let the fallen crabapple leaves mulch them. I really hope they come back and start blooming this May (since we can get snow up until Memorial Day, if they do return, they might just bloom all summer, rather than just a 'spring' thing). Wish me luck.
Native violets are found throughout parts of the western US, but the front range of Colorado is mostly devoid of native violet species. The species you planted, Viola odorata, the sweet violet or English violet is native to Europe and Asia and has been widely planted as a landscape plant. Be aware that it has been listed as an invasive species in Oregon and has escaped cultivation in several other states as well.
@@BackyardEcology The Rocky Mountain region is devoid of a lot of plants that aren't specifically adapted to some of the harshest, most varied and unpredictable growing conditions on the planet... outside of the Sahara and the polar regions. One of the things that I think will keep the violets in check, if they survive at all, is the soil that surrounds the cultivated and amended strip where I planted them. It's clay, and not just any clay. It's clay made from fine dust deposited over millions of years of wind screaming down from the eastern side of the Rockies, deposited, baked to shovel-blunting hardness during our scorching summers. It lacks the beautiful loaminess that comes with the presence of deciduous trees. The only things this soil will grow without help is buffalo grass, rabbitbrush, yucca, henbit and Cowboy's Delight if we get a rainy spring, and the usual roster of tumbleweeds and the Devil's Morning Glory. The violets will have their work cut out for them if they try to spread into that clay. So we'll see how they do.
Love, love, love wild violets!!! I even put some in a pot on my deck. Violets violets everywhere....pollinators come and have a nectar drink.....😊 I also have plants that were gifts from birds.....a grape vine and a wild black cherry tree. I love my eclectic back yard.
I wish I could post a picture. I dig up Viola sororia out of lawns and pot them up. I’ve given them to people as gifts to plant outside to spread the love of gardening. I have about 40 different pots of these violets
Im sure I do not know. I agree, they are beautiful. I leave the back 11 acres unmown, out of 15, for the wildlife,2:00 and I absolutely love the native flowers in that lot.
My grandmother picked violets, put them in a little silver mug filled with water. She kept it in the refrigerator. Used the water as a refreshing drink.
Amen!! I spread the seeds and actively transplant them to form borders around trees, establish desirable groundcover, and add them to flowerbeds & pots for the beauty of leaves & flowers.
These are one of my favorite wildflowers! I love watching for them to bloom as a sign of spring. I never knew they were a type of violet, thank you for this video about them!
I always was wondering the same thing. I would find some munched leaves but never any caterpillars. Then one day I was reading about fritillaries and it all clicked.
@@BackyardEcology I’ve noticed tomato hornworms doing the same thing. I have to go out at night. Then I put them in a jar and raise them until they pupate!
I love my violets! They’re all over my front lawn. A few years ago, we dug a few up and replanted in this little bed of sedum in the backyard. Those purple flowers, mixed with the silver sedum make my spring garden pop! No regrets.
They are so adorable! I have been able to gently transplant them and get nice stands of them throughout my yard. I had not actually ever seen them until we bought the house next door and there were lost of them there.
I love violets! I have several colors growing in my yard and I love eating them! So delicious! I recently made a beautiful salad and garnished it with violets (leaves and flowers) and took it to a party. Wasn't sure if anybody would try it but they did and it was awesome!
THANKS for your violet video. I have loved violets since I was a little girl in Ohio. No having also lived in Indiana and Michigan, I have seen several types native in these states. I dig some purple violets out of my lawn every spring and plant them into my garden to use as edging.
The eastern US is not the only area that has violets. I'm from Salt Lake City, Utah, a mountain desert area. We always had tons of violets in our yard. I loved how they spread themselves. They were, and are still, my favorite flower and my favorite flower fragrance, ever since I was a pre-schooler. Now I have great-grandchildren who are pre-schoolers. I moved to the west central part of Oregon more than a decade ago. There is a plant here that looks pretty much like the violets that I grew up with, it spreads like it. The differences are 1: the leaves seem a bit smaller and darker, sometimes almost reddish near the leaf stem, AND the dang leaves are corrugated, and 2: the flowers have zero fragrance. So we've got the prettiness but not the most important part, the fragrance.
Violets have a wide range throughout the world. The focus of this channel is the eastern United States which is why I only cover that region in the videos.
I was in southern Illinois for the eclipse, and I thought I have seen thick violets before, but there was a realty office with a sample garden in Metropolis that had almost the entire yard covered with a mat of blooming violets.
I LOVE violets and am so happy to see them again this Spring 💜 I have used them as greens for our baby chicks, to flavor vinegar and also as a very effective infused olive oil based balm for fibrocystic breasts. Lovely video!
There are a few yards in my neighborhood that have let the violets spread out amongst the lawn grass, and they frankly look so, so pretty. Especially while the flowers are in bloom, but the rest of the time, it's just more green amongst the green of the grass! Where's the downside?
I leave our violets grow most places except in our raised beds where they creep in each year. I’m not too meticulous about their removal. 😁I love them for all the reasons you mentioned and also for the fact that rabbits and ground hogs eat them and I don’t need to chase them away. That’s one thing I don’t mind them eating. And the violets grow back beautifully. I imagine birds like eating the seeds too. Thx for getting the news out there about this amazing native plant in our region.
I keep looking for seeds to try and make a native violet lawn... People do the clover lawn thing but these are amazing and much more durable than the grass in our yard. I just need MORE.
Seed can be hard to find as it is hard to collect in enough quantity. Easiest way to increase them is to move a few to areas where you want them and they will fill in over time.
I completely agree with you about native violets. They should be more appreciated. You might want to take a closer look at the bee you're showing at 1:45 as a "bumble bee." Pretty sure that's actually a carpenter bee. It has a smooth, shiny abdomen. Bumble bee abdomens are hairy. (Though, apparently -- judging by the photo -- carpenter bees like violets, too. 🙂)
I'd like to know more about the different violet species. I grew up in northwest Ohio and knew only a purple flower as "violet." Here in my neighborhood in Burlington, the most common flower is white with a blue-purple "throat." I actually did a Google image search on the first blooms because I couldn't believe it was a violet.
I didnt have money for landscaping when my husband and I married…I moved them to borders or wherever I needed a spring bloom…it worked…but will tell you…I have lost control in some areas…👍😂
Violets are probably hated because they tend to plant themselves in the middle of your lawn. I don't know how they do this; They seem to appear out of nowhere. I guess most people aren't going to take the time and care to do what I do, which is to actually dig them out of my lawn and transplant them in a garden bed. And just as they appear out of nowhere on the lawn itself, in the garden bed they really don't spread. The only thing I can figure is they must have some directional sense when they shoot their seeds and aim them for maximum sunlight.
Just let the lawn be violets... Seriously though, I know that is not an option for some, so moving them to a place where they can do what they are best at is a great alternative.
@@BackyardEcology You could leave them in the lawn; However, they don't grow very large when they're surrounded by grass. If you dig them up and put them in their own nice little spot in the in the garden, they get huge!
I have these all over and around my house every year I love them , I've only have the deep purple I didn't know there are different colors I'll have to keep an eye out for them and when and if I find some I'll dig them up and plant them in my yard..🌼
Please do not dig plants from the wild. There are plenty of native plant nurseries to get them from. The only time wild collecting makes sense is it is in an area that is about to be developed and the plants will be destroyed.
I love the native violates in my yard. The only thing that I don't like is that it is difficult to mow the grass or run the string trimmer without cutting them. I don't have areas that I allow to grow up so that wild flowers can bloom. I have several different wild plants which I use for teas and tinctures.
🐝🌻🐝🌻 Link to Bee and Forage Plants book mentioned in the video: amzn.to/4akww86 🐝🌻🐝🌻
🌾🌾🌾🌾 Learn about an other under loved native plant goldenrod in this video: th-cam.com/video/Zsq5yFsAU-Y/w-d-xo.html 🌾🌾🌾🌾
This video is NOT sponsored. Some product links are affiliate links which means if you buy something we'll receive a small commission.
I really dig your videos. Most of the videos I've seen do far are strictly East Coast varieties that all stop at Louisiana. As a native Texan trying to provide native habitat, pollen with focus on using plants that native bugs thrive on.... I've been left with questions of how to facilitate these outcomes.
Any advice??
@@jerrellbevers6071 If you live in far eastern TX most of the info in the videos would apply, once you get into the more arid parts of the state everything is different. There is just too much difference between the eastern US (I use the Mississippi River valley as the line) and the west for me to be able to cover everything. Plus I live in the east and am familiar with it.
I would like to see a video going into more detail about the different varieties of violets.
Violets are hated by the "perfect lawn" people. My neighbor in one side spends a fortune in treatments for these every year. I, and my other side neighbor, have violets and wildflowers growing all over our property! They are pretty, but I also didn't know how important they were until I saw your video. Keep sending out these great videos!
Thank you! Violets are one of those flowers that are so common nobody really realizes that they are vitally important to a good number of pollinators.
But too lazy to just pull them all figures. I heard that historically the perfect lawn was ppl wanting to show how they can afford to have unproductive land. Like they're ballers or smthn
The guy across the street from me is a professional landscaper. He's always out there mowing and edging and aerating and watering.
Me, I'm killing off the grass and planting native ground-covers. His lawn still turns brown in summer, but mine stays green with very little work.
So you don't have an HOA? Because they would force you into joining the monoculture grass cult.
They taste great used as cooked greens in stir fry, salads, quiche. They also contain more iron than spinach. I have a backyard full of them and do not spray them.
If a seed catalog promoted a plant as "a short perennial groundcover that spreads, thrives even in dry shade under trees, beautiful blooms, and even edible"-people would throw money at them! I've never understood how something so lovely is thought to be a weed.
Exactly. But since they volunteer to come up everywhere a lot of people just see them as a common weed. Our yard is loaded with them, and fleabane, and a ton of other "weeds".
Thank you! One of my favorite quotes on violets: It’s the most visible beginning, this low blue flame in the woods. I think of it as a pilot light that ignites the entire burst of resurrection we call spring. - from Forest and Thicket by John Eastman
Love that!
Love it! Thanks for sharing! 💜
Wow! That’s so lovely!! 💙
I used to pull them out, as if they were a weed, and then one day had an ‘ah-ha’ moment and realized that I had a free, vigorous, flowering ground cover that I should be leaving alone. So glad I came to that realization. The flowers are lovely and so very welcome in spring.
I'm slowly expanding a ground cover composed of violets (a few varieties), wild strawberry (fragaria virginiana), and purple poppy mallow (callirhoe involucrata). They weave between each other well and the latter two keep the ground covered when the violets hide for the winter. More videos showing love for violets would be welcome!
Wild strawberry is another great native groundcover that often gets overlooked! There will be more violet videos coming!
That sounds gorgoeous!
I just saw a Facebook post recently where the poster didn't even know they were violets and were trying every way possible to remove them from their lawn. It just makes me sad that people are so hellbent on having a "perfect" lawn that's good for nothing and destroys the environment.
This is very common. I know people who know they are violets and still do everything they can to rid their lawn of them.
Totally agree 😢 😂
I just dug most of them out of the areas that are mowed in my yard and put them in my garden so they can thrive. I left them in the areas that are not mowed since they will be fine there. I love the native violets!
Ooh good idea!
Great video! I agree- a video about Violet species native to eastern North America would be terrific! Thank you.
Thanks! There will be more violet videos in the future!
Me, too!
Me three
i love wild violets so much. i can’t wrap my head around thinking of them as a weed!
Exactly!
We moved to a two story cabin in the middle of a 300 acre forest in rural Georgia last year. The bottom floor of the cabin is an oversized heated and air conditioned garage (which my husband loves of course!) and the living portion of the cabin is on the second story. You can access the house from a stairway inside the garage to the second floor, or by an outside stairway at the front of the cabin which leads to a wide balcony across the front of the cabin, and the front door. All of the soil on the property is tightly compacted red Georgia clay, including a flower bed that sits beneath the outside stairway in front of the lower balcony. I was pleasantly surprised when March came around to find the whole red clay bed covered in deep green foliage with beautiful dark purple violets. At first I thought they were pansies, because some of the flowers sort of had what looked like a pansy face. But I knew they had to be a wild species because the flowers were much smaller than your typical pansy. But after a while I figured out that they were actually wild violets. And they are absolutely beautiful, and now our balcony is guarded and protected by huge beautiful bumblebees. We were having problems with wasps wanting to build nests inside the ceiling fans on the balcony. And we love sitting out on the balcony with our coffee in the morning and in the evenings listening to the birds sing. And as the balcony is on the second story, it feels like you are sitting in a treehouse amongst the trees that surround our woodland cabin. But thanks to the bumblebees protecting their patch of wild violets on the lower level, we no longer have to worry about the wasps, as the bumblebees are very territorial and chase them all away. I absolutely love having that beautiful patch of wild violets in front of our cabin. And I love how well they grow in that red GA clay where nothing else will grow. And I am hoping we will soon see a lot of fritillary butterflies hatching after the caterpillars spin their cocoons and hatch out as beautiful butterflies. I so enjoyed hearing you talk about these underappreciated beautiful native wildflowers. Thank you!
Awesome!
Thanks for your take on them.
With time and amending you can create a rich soil from that clay. Sometimes I wish I had just a little clay, my soil is so sandy it doesn’t hold moisture at all! Fun story of the bumbles protecting your space!
@@lilolmecj There are tons of native plants that will thrive in clay soil. What we as humans consider not great soil is quite normal in many areas and the plants are adapted to it. Much easier to go with the soil nature provides and plant the things that are adapted to it.
@@BackyardEcology I completely understand your point, and working with what your environment provides makes a lot of sense. I am speaking to the idea of wanting to grow some tomatoes and peppers which will grow more successfully in a less dense soil. I am close to Seattle, WA, and nearly anything will grow here. But I have to adjust some things to be successful. I am primarily speaking about my vegetable garden. The soil is very acidic, so calcium uptake is impaired, resulting in blossom end rot, which is r/t weakened cell walls which collapse as the fruit gets larger. My yard and general landscaping are all variants of wild growing plants. I started to say except my roses, but wild roses thrive here.
I agree that they’re excellent ground cover. Surprisingly, the common violets in my garden beds stay green through the worst summer droughts with no watering. Tough as nails.
Common blue violets are tough little plants. They are one of the species that can take the sun and heat.
Yes, more about native violets.
When I was a child the violet was my favorite flower to give to my grandmother. It is still a favorite. Subscribed
Thanks for the sub!
Thanks from a first time viewer and new subscriber! If it weren't for the violets, I wouldn't have much of a lawn at all!
Thanks for the sub! Noting wrong with a violet lawn!
😆 My yard is made of violets, clover, and water vine, with some patches of grass. Oh, and plenty of wild onions 😂
I considered wild onion for this video - it might make it into the next one. Seems just about every low mow lawn has them.
My grandson loves picking these to give me for a tiny bouquet. 💜
A few years ago wild violets started popping up in our yard now our yard is have violets and half clover. When the violets stops blooming the clover starts. The best part is we don’t have to mow as often.
Violets are a great lawn alternative. While white clover isn't native, it isn't as bad when it comes to pollinator usage as many non-native plants and it works well in places that require a lawn to be under a certain height. Stay tuned for a video that will talk more about clover and other lawn flowers.
I am a huge fan of the humble violet
"Yes!" to doing a video on the different violets.
We need our native bees!
I live in Eastern Colorado, and up until a few years ago, I'd never run into a 'real' violet. Sure, the nurseries are packed with pansies and violas, johnny-jump-ups, etc, in a rainbow of colors, but I hadn't encountered a violet with any kind of scent to them. Because the Mountain Time Zone is home to some insane weather variability, as well as being on the arid side, with incredibly strong sunshine and lots of it, I presumed they would hard to find. And they are, because successfully growing them here means pampering them, mulching them, finding enough shade and water to give them a chance to root... and the early and late cold snaps of what passes for autumn and spring here are another obstacle to keeping them alive. However, one specialty nursery, at the end of the season, had about eight or nine pots of 'viola odorata' on the clearance tables. I snapped them up after sniffing one of the flowers and confirming it was the real thing, I planted them beneath a crabapple tree in a sheltered strip containing my spring bulbs, and let the fallen crabapple leaves mulch them. I really hope they come back and start blooming this May (since we can get snow up until Memorial Day, if they do return, they might just bloom all summer, rather than just a 'spring' thing). Wish me luck.
Native violets are found throughout parts of the western US, but the front range of Colorado is mostly devoid of native violet species. The species you planted, Viola odorata, the sweet violet or English violet is native to Europe and Asia and has been widely planted as a landscape plant. Be aware that it has been listed as an invasive species in Oregon and has escaped cultivation in several other states as well.
@@BackyardEcology The Rocky Mountain region is devoid of a lot of plants that aren't specifically adapted to some of the harshest, most varied and unpredictable growing conditions on the planet... outside of the Sahara and the polar regions. One of the things that I think will keep the violets in check, if they survive at all, is the soil that surrounds the cultivated and amended strip where I planted them. It's clay, and not just any clay. It's clay made from fine dust deposited over millions of years of wind screaming down from the eastern side of the Rockies, deposited, baked to shovel-blunting hardness during our scorching summers. It lacks the beautiful loaminess that comes with the presence of deciduous trees. The only things this soil will grow without help is buffalo grass, rabbitbrush, yucca, henbit and Cowboy's Delight if we get a rainy spring, and the usual roster of tumbleweeds and the Devil's Morning Glory. The violets will have their work cut out for them if they try to spread into that clay. So we'll see how they do.
Love, love, love wild violets!!! I even put some in a pot on my deck. Violets violets everywhere....pollinators come and have a nectar drink.....😊 I also have plants that were gifts from birds.....a grape vine and a wild black cherry tree. I love my eclectic back yard.
Sounds awesome!
They smell so good, too. We take our chairs and sit right in the patches. My grandson would eat all the flowers if I don't stop him.
I love that little flower. I try to not harm them in my yard.
I love these flowers! They grow all over my yard and make me happy. We hold off mowing the areas the violets are in (or set the mower to high).
That's a great idea!
I wish I could post a picture. I dig up Viola sororia out of lawns and pot them up. I’ve given them to people as gifts to plant outside to spread the love of gardening. I have about 40 different pots of these violets
Awesome!
I love my violets. My yard has literally hundreds. 😊
Im sure I do not know. I agree, they are beautiful. I leave the back 11 acres unmown, out of 15, for the wildlife,2:00 and I absolutely love the native flowers in that lot.
It is amazing what comes up in some areas when you leave it alone.
My grandmother picked violets, put them in a little silver mug filled with water. She kept it in the refrigerator. Used the water as a refreshing drink.
Amen!! I spread the seeds and actively transplant them to form borders around trees, establish desirable groundcover, and add them to flowerbeds & pots for the beauty of leaves & flowers.
Thanks for sharing!
I’ve been looking for a hardy native ground cover. I’m going with violets!
Good choice! They are tough to beat!
These are one of my favorite wildflowers! I love watching for them to bloom as a sign of spring. I never knew they were a type of violet, thank you for this video about them!
Glad you enjoyed the video!
Love it. Now let’s see a video on viburnums. I can’t decide on which one to plant.
I have been wanting to get a viburnum video together. They are all awesome shrubs.
YAY!!! someone talking about one of my favorite plants.
They are my ground cover around my home
My property is covered in these and they make me so happy already; this makes them even better! Thank you!
Glad to hear about the 'hiding during day' thing with the caterpillars. I was wondering why I never saw any on these supposed host plants.
I always was wondering the same thing. I would find some munched leaves but never any caterpillars. Then one day I was reading about fritillaries and it all clicked.
I’ll be out looking too!
Sometimes you can find them fairly easily. Other times they do a real good job of staying out of sight. @@davehendricks4824
@@BackyardEcology I’ve noticed tomato hornworms doing the same thing. I have to go out at night. Then I put them in a jar and raise them until they pupate!
They are cool caterpillars even if they do chew up my tomato plants!@@davehendricks4824
They get total respect from me. I just love them!!! I wouldn't hurt one of them for any reason!!!
Oh I would love to see another video on violets!!
Violets are popular! More videos coming in the future!
I definitely allow goldenrod to grow and bloom for the golden monarchs.
Do you know that goldenrod was the replacement Liberty Tea base made after the Boston Tea Party?
I love my violets! They’re all over my front lawn. A few years ago, we dug a few up and replanted in this little bed of sedum in the backyard. Those purple flowers, mixed with the silver sedum make my spring garden pop! No regrets.
I make violet jelly out of them.
IL state flower- Blue Violet
my state flower!
Cool!
Hey, a video about state flowers and which is the most beneficial would be interesting. I've got black- eyed Susan, so looking good here. haha
That is a great idea! @@karenholt9744
NJ right?
Yes please.. I live around Tampa Florida..Thank You!!🦋🌴
I’d like more information on violets!! Just found your site. Great info!
Awesome! Thank you! Stay tuned for a future violet species video!
I adore my violets! So excited to see them bloom in the spring and see them spread through my landscape over the years. ❤
I love my yard of violets! I'd love a video with a deeper dive into violet culture.
There is more violet content coming in the future!
I love these purple beauties.
I have them all over my property.
Excellent video by the way!
Thanks! Glad you like the video!
One of my favorites!
They are so adorable! I have been able to gently transplant them and get nice stands of them throughout my yard. I had not actually ever seen them until we bought the house next door and there were lost of them there.
I love violets! I have several colors growing in my yard and I love eating them! So delicious! I recently made a beautiful salad and garnished it with violets (leaves and flowers) and took it to a party. Wasn't sure if anybody would try it but they did and it was awesome!
Awesome! Who wouldn't eat a violet salad?
My favorite early bloomer❤❤❤❤❤ northern Kentucky zone 6b
I really enjoyed this video!
I love the wild violets in my yard and will now keep them. Thanks so much!
Nice! Glad you enjoyed the video!
So true! They are great, tough native plants.
One of my favorites!
I have always loved these and Johnny-jump-ups, which both grow wild in my area.
I love our wild violets here in IL. They're gorgeous and good for our environment.
I definitely want to hear more about violets! I love when they pop up around the neighborhood
More violet content coming in the future!
THANKS for your violet video.
I have loved violets since I was a little girl in Ohio.
No having also lived in Indiana and Michigan, I have seen several types native in these states.
I dig some purple violets out of my lawn every spring and plant them into my garden to use as edging.
You are so welcome! Violets belong in just about every native flower garden!
We love these in our yard with the dandelions. This is also great to know because we have a patch in our yard where the ground bees return every year.
Mining bees are so fun to watch!
Love them! Encourage them in my garden.
The eastern US is not the only area that has violets. I'm from Salt Lake City, Utah, a mountain desert area. We always had tons of violets in our yard. I loved how they spread themselves. They were, and are still, my favorite flower and my favorite flower fragrance, ever since I was a pre-schooler. Now I have great-grandchildren who are pre-schoolers. I moved to the west central part of Oregon more than a decade ago. There is a plant here that looks pretty much like the violets that I grew up with, it spreads like it. The differences are 1: the leaves seem a bit smaller and darker, sometimes almost reddish near the leaf stem, AND the dang leaves are corrugated, and 2: the flowers have zero fragrance. So we've got the prettiness but not the most important part, the fragrance.
Violets have a wide range throughout the world. The focus of this channel is the eastern United States which is why I only cover that region in the videos.
I grow them for butterflies and native bees.
Nice!
I live in Central Ohio. It is amazing how many edibles I've been "weeding" until this year!!❤ Thank you for your videos!
I love the violets in my yard. Didn’t know they were niche plants for fritillary! Thanks!
Violets are truly super little plants!
I was in southern Illinois for the eclipse, and I thought I have seen thick violets before, but there was a realty office with a sample garden in Metropolis that had almost the entire yard covered with a mat of blooming violets.
That sounds awesome!
My neighbors yard was solid purple one year.
Well that explains why we have so many Fritillaries in our yard, we are covered with native violets in our CT yard
Both good things to have lots of!
I want my backyard to look like a woodland glade, and the wild violets are so pretty in the spring.
I made a syrup with them and its amazing
Been obsessed with these this spring since I found out you can make jelly from them. Great video, thanks
Let us know how the jelly turns out!
Violets are my favorite flowers
After the blooms pass on our field’s Dog Violets, my Shelties like to munch on the leaves occasionally.
I LOVE violets and am so happy to see them again this Spring 💜 I have used them as greens for our baby chicks, to flavor vinegar and also as a very effective infused olive oil based balm for fibrocystic breasts. Lovely video!
Thanks! Violets are super helpful little plants!
I love them!!!
This made me so happy! My lawn is just full of violets, and in April and May it is gorgeous.
There are a few yards in my neighborhood that have let the violets spread out amongst the lawn grass, and they frankly look so, so pretty. Especially while the flowers are in bloom, but the rest of the time, it's just more green amongst the green of the grass! Where's the downside?
It is very hard to find a downside to violets in the lawn!
Yes, please, a video on violet species would be great!
More violet content will be coming in the future!
Yes please! About the species of native violets.
More vine content is in the works!
I leave our violets grow most places except in our raised beds where they creep in each year. I’m not too meticulous about their removal. 😁I love them for all the reasons you mentioned and also for the fact that rabbits and ground hogs eat them and I don’t need to chase them away. That’s one thing I don’t mind them eating. And the violets grow back beautifully. I imagine birds like eating the seeds too. Thx for getting the news out there about this amazing native plant in our region.
I try to spread the word about violets whenever I can. They are such an underappreciated native wildflower!
They are my favorite flower.
Yes please. More videos on North American violets. Virginia varieties perhaps.😊
More are in the works!
I keep looking for seeds to try and make a native violet lawn... People do the clover lawn thing but these are amazing and much more durable than the grass in our yard. I just need MORE.
Seed can be hard to find as it is hard to collect in enough quantity. Easiest way to increase them is to move a few to areas where you want them and they will fill in over time.
Violets are my favorite flower
MOAR VIOLETS PLEEZ! Which is why I'm not mowing. You're the second person to recommend Holm's book to me.
Her bee and forage plant book is excellent!
I completely agree with you about native violets. They should be more appreciated. You might want to take a closer look at the bee you're showing at 1:45 as a "bumble bee." Pretty sure that's actually a carpenter bee. It has a smooth, shiny abdomen. Bumble bee abdomens are hairy. (Though, apparently -- judging by the photo -- carpenter bees like violets, too. 🙂)
Definitely need a violet video!!! ❤❤❤
There will be mire violet videos coming in the future!
I'd like to know more about the different violet species. I grew up in northwest Ohio and knew only a purple flower as "violet." Here in my neighborhood in Burlington, the most common flower is white with a blue-purple "throat." I actually did a Google image search on the first blooms because I couldn't believe it was a violet.
There will be one (more likely several, there are a lot of violets!) coming out in the future.
Those are the two I have, as well, in north central Maryland, and I just discovered that white one a few years ago; definitely the minority here.
I didnt have money for landscaping when my husband and I married…I moved them to borders or wherever I needed a spring bloom…it worked…but will tell you…I have lost control in some areas…👍😂
Wild violets are my favorite flower! I'm so lucky that so many grow in my yard!! Never knew about the frittilaries and bees that rely on them... cool!
Glad you found the video informative! There is a lot going on in the world of violets!
We had violets in our lawn in San Diego--must be native there too. I love them!!
There are several violet species native to the west coast!
They’re beautiful!
Violets are probably hated because they tend to plant themselves in the middle of your lawn. I don't know how they do this; They seem to appear out of nowhere.
I guess most people aren't going to take the time and care to do what I do, which is to actually dig them out of my lawn and transplant them in a garden bed. And just as they appear out of nowhere on the lawn itself, in the garden bed they really don't spread.
The only thing I can figure is they must have some directional sense when they shoot their seeds and aim them for maximum sunlight.
Just let the lawn be violets... Seriously though, I know that is not an option for some, so moving them to a place where they can do what they are best at is a great alternative.
@@BackyardEcology
You could leave them in the lawn; However, they don't grow very large when they're surrounded by grass. If you dig them up and put them in their own nice little spot in the in the garden, they get huge!
@@f0xygem A lot depends on the conditions in the lawn - there are areas of my lawn where the violets are huge and outcompeting the grass.
Wood violet is the state flower for Wisconsin.
Love love violets!!
I have these all over and around my house every year I love them , I've only have the deep purple I didn't know there are different colors I'll have to keep an eye out for them and when and if I find some I'll dig them up and plant them in my yard..🌼
Please do not dig plants from the wild. There are plenty of native plant nurseries to get them from. The only time wild collecting makes sense is it is in an area that is about to be developed and the plants will be destroyed.
My kids toddle around the yard eating the blooms. I think I’ll choose not to worry about there being a native bee deep in the bloom … 😅
I love the native violets when they are not in my garden beds and not in my greenhouse
Didn’t know they were natives. My mom’s yard did have errant johnny jump ups in the lawn that self seeded every year.
I love the native violates in my yard. The only thing that I don't like is that it is difficult to mow the grass or run the string trimmer without cutting them. I don't have areas that I allow to grow up so that wild flowers can bloom. I have several different wild plants which I use for teas and tinctures.