Lysimachia: A Lovely Thug

Sometimes when you inherit plants from well intentioned, yet less informed gardeners than oneself, well, sometimes you're not quite sure what to expect. The friend from the neighborhood who initially gave us a clump of this Lysimachia ciliata 'Purpurea,' swore that it was 'Yellow Bee Balm,' something that we, of course had never heard of, though we were intrigued and said 'sure!' I'm sure that regular readers are chuckling by now at how anyone could mistake this for Monarda ... it's not even a mint (it's in the Primulaceae family!), though it has many of the semi-invasive properties of the mints (of which, of course Monarda is a member as well). Are you scared yet? Actually, you shouldn't be, because this Lysimachia is aggressive, but controllable. In fact, in the very near future it's going to be controlled to about half its current spread. We've had a few people express interest in taking some home and I sure wish they'd get here with their shovels soon, or they're going to be out of luck, because one way or another, this plant is getting seriously thinned out this year. We're not engaged in full scale annihilation (as with the Heliopsis, but more on that later), because we really do like this plant, but we just don't have the space for it to take over.
So now, after having damned this plant with faint praise, I should highlight the numerous good points about Lysimachia ciliata. Obviously, it's a tough attractive plant that requires virtually no attention ... so for certain growing situations, it's a really good choice. But for the more space-challenged gardener, one needs to be ready to be as aggressive about thinning it out as it is about spreading out expansively. For a thug, though, it sure is lovely ... with its purple-burgundy colored foliage (the intensity depends on how much sun it gets) and simple yellow flowers in profusion. When we first got this in 2004, we needed plants to fill out the recently opened up gardening spaces ... but we didn't quite expect this one to settle in so quickly. This would make a great fence line plant for a sunny situation, where it could within a few years line it ... but in our front gardens where we prefer to highlight some of our more dramatic performers, it has gradually become a bit of a pest, thus the imminent thinning out.

It's all part of the gentle taming of our (self-described) Savage Cottage Garden style of doing things around here ... we're willing to let some rogues in on the space, but we definitely reserve the right to determine appropriate boundaries. Keeping this in mind when planting this Lysimachia, should, I hope, put this all into perspective. Lots of positives and pretty, but caveat emptor! A lot of what we have is going to the compost soon, but that's not a reason to banish this one from the garden entirely. It will remain, however, a bit diminished in scope...