Free plants for your garden! What a sweet sound. It is possible if you can find and collect seeds right in your own back yard!
Some of the seed pods that plants produce are quite beautiful and interesting in themselves. Many varieties are used as decorative elements in arrangements. Max makes a Christmas wreath every year that is covered in them.
Here is a link to Dave’s Garden which Terry provided. It has an interesting article called “Seed Snatchin’: The Art and Sport of Collecting Seeds“. Get some tips on how to collect free seeds. Be careful what you snatch, though. A patch of burdock may not be what you’ll be wanting…
Seed Head Gallery
From top to bottom, left to right: Pale Purple Coneflower, Corky-Fruited Water-Dropwort (you will have to go to England for this), Garlic, Marsh Marigold, Poppy, Burdock, Sunflower.
Between the turkeys and the goldfinches there aren’t many desirable seed heads left in my yard. But last year I had sunflowers and spider flowers growing across the street in the road side wild which were probably blown over there at some point.