Queen Anne’s Lace in an early-summer garden

I like to see Queen Anne’s Lace growing along the roadsides in summer. How can I get it to grow in my garden?

It’s not hard to get Queen Anne’s Lace started in a garden bed. In fact, the reason you see so much of it in open meadows along the side of the road is that it’s a prolific self-seeder.

After they bloom in late spring and early summer, the lacy clusters of white flowers fold up into a cup-shaped clump of seeds. To grow it in your own garden, the editors of Southern Living Garden Book suggest crushing a seed cluster in your hand (one seed clump is plenty, they say) and sprinkling the seeds on bare soil in late summer. Queen Anne’s Lace is a biennial plant. Next spring and summer, you’ll see tufts of lacy foliage, and the plants will flower the second year, and die.

Once you have it in your garden, though, you can have it forever because before the plant dies, it drops those seeds to the ground, where they readily germinate, and the cycle begins again. The seeds also disperse easily, so if you’re not careful, you’ll have Queen Anne’s Lace just about everywhere – where you want it, and also where you don’t — in a few years.

The flowers look nice in a bouquet, so one way to manage the spread is to cut the flowers to use in summer arrangements, Southern Living Garden Book suggests.

Queen Anne’s Lace thrives in full sun. I know from experience, though, that it also blooms in a garden that receives just a few hours of direct sun, though it flowers a bit later in the season.
By the way, Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota carota is the botanical name) is a wild cousin of the carrot (D. carota sativus), but forms a small root that is not edible.