Snails Among Us

Snails Among Us

I am an avid, amateur gardener. Like most gardeners, snails are the bane of my flowers. (Although my daughter likes them. She calls them “cute, little guys.”) The beautiful bed of impatiens I planted just the other day quickly becomes a snail salad overnight. They can decimate six packs of six packs in one sitting. One evening I happened to step outside to drop something in the big trash bin and stayed outside for over half an hour pulling snails out of my flowerbed. Thirty some snails later, I was still disposing them in the green bin. (My daughter thinks the green bin is where they go to take a “nap”. Yes, I am a bad, bad mother. LOL) I’ve started using snail bait again, but even that isn’t an easy decision for me as I don’t like killing things…except maybe mosquitoes, fleas, flies, aphids and cockroaches, but that’s another story entirely.

In an attempt to make my gardening experience easier, I decided to plant flowers that don’t appeal to snails and slugs…if I could find them. With very little research, I did. There are many, but I chose a few that are vivid in color and available in a variety of colors. Here is the list of flowers that I planted:

Sweet alyssum (white, lavender, and purple/fuschia)
Lobelia (varying shades of blue – my daughter’s favorite – and the red violet)
Phlox (red, pink, white, purple, peach, and more)

These flowers will reseed themselves from season to season, and I find them in other beds around my yard, making gardening easier and my garden more vibrant.

The alyssum and lobelia are hardier than the phlox, but all of them are beautiful. And while I’ve been told that white alyssum will reseed more than the other colors, the lavender and purple have returned too. By the way, most of the flowers along the path up to the house are volunteers (they came back from the previous summer).

Just a note, all of these prefer heavy doses of sunshine and need regular watering.

While I do plant other types of flowers, as seen from the photos, these three have been the easiest to maintain.

I apologize for the double post of photos as the first time I attempted to load these with the article, it did not work. Regardless, I hope you enjoy them. :)

Marci Baun
Editor in Chief
Wild Child Publishing
Freya's Bower