Viola & Pansy (Viola v wittrockiana) & (Viola x wittrockiana) by Gayla Sanders
These days, such flowers decorate cakes and accompany salad greens. Trends in the kitchen in this case may help explain their popularity in the garden. Each variety has a different flavour and some are definitely superior to others. Growing your own flowers for eating assures you that the flowers have not been sprayed with chemical pesticides.
Pansies and violas are also dried in presses, put in frames or used for other decorations. Drying them is as simple as pressing fresh blooms between pages in a phone book.
Viola tricolor (the small standard purple and yellow one) has been used medicinally since ancient times. It was worn as a garland to prevent dizziness, and Athenians used it to "moderate anger".¹ Its leaves and flowers are anti-inflammatory and used today to treat skin disorders.
One of the results of thousands of years of cultivation is the assortment of colours, patterns and petal forms in which these plants are found. Both come in nearly every colour imaginable and many are bicolour or tricolour combinations. Most violas and some pansies have a distinct blotch pattern on the petals called a ‘face’. If you look closely it really does resemble a scowling face.
Violas and pansies are also one of the few plants whose seeds can be sown at awkward times of the year such as late summer or mid-fall. Sowing seeds in the garden for off-season blooms is as easy as scattering a handful of seeds over exposed soil. It's a good way to save money since garden centers tend to overchange on four or six plug trays in the fall season. Pansies and violas will often reseed themselves in the garden for years to come. It has become popular in the last few years to naturalize them into lawns by digging small holes and growing them individually as pockets of colour.
Instead of settling for the usual potted mums this season, try your hand at closely packed mixes of pansies and violas. With almost no effort you can have the look of spring and summer in your garden this fall.
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1. Ody, Penelope. "The Complete Medicinal Herbal", Canada: Key Porter Books, 1993.
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