Wild about Violas

VIOLA SPP.
GROWS 6 TO 8 IN.

Wild pansies (Viola tricolor) and garden pansies (V. ¥wittrockiana), short-lived perennials, thrive in the conditions on our farm. The wild sort, better known as Johnny-jump-up, lives up to its name, self-seeding in cool, moist pockets along the garden path and at the back of the apple tree among primulas, Jacob’s ladder, and columbine. We started with a golden-eyed all-purple type that eventually produced desirable variants, among them a cream and violet “face” delicately lined with black whiskers, which obligingly grows through the shaded base of clustered bellflower (Campanula glomerata) nearly all summer, even through heat. Such types are noted and propagate by stem cuttings (seeds are variable). Wild pansy’s older name, heartsease, preserves its use as a heart stimulant. We also maintain colonies of its showier cousin, the garden pansy, in shades of yellow, cream, raspberry, burgundy, and blue at the base of the apple tree where they can be seen as we pass by every day. Cut back both pansies just before they are entirely spent so they rebloom in late summer and fall.

Jigs and Jo Ann Gardner have compiled thirty year’s worth of lessons from their remote farm on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, in Gardens of Use and Delight (Fulcrum 2002) from which this text has been adapted with permission.