How to Grow Sweet Alyssum (Lobularia Maritima)

Hi, this is Yolanda Vanveen and in this segment we're going to learn all about, "How to grow Sweet Alyssum or Lobularia." It's a gorgeous trailing plant from the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands. Now Lobularia Maritima, also known as Sweet Alys or Sweet Alyssum is native to the Mediterranean area, all the way down to the Canary Islands, which are islands off of the North Coast of Africa. And so they've been brought all over the world to grow as garden plants and now they've even grown all over as weeds and potentially, invasive weeds in some areas. Now Alyssum are just bunches of small daisy-like flowers and they combine to make one large grouping of flowers that's very pretty. And so when there's a large group of them in an area or in the field that looks like one big carpets of white snow. So they're really, really pretty garden plants. And you start them by seed in the spring and they'll come up and bloom all summer through the fall and then they drop their seeds on their own and re-seed themselves. And you'll start with one plant in one area and you'll find that they can scatter to areas quite far away, very rarely. They're really easy to grow and multiply. Lobularia or Sweet Alyssum is hardy in zones seven to ten. So they can handle a little bit of frost but not a lot. And because they're an annual, they'll come up and bloom and then die back to nothing and then the seeds will just produce blooms again for the next year. So you can start them in the spring and let them bloom through the summer, save the seeds and then start them in the summer again. Or just leave them in the area and you'll find they'll come back on their own. They have a slight fragrance that's really nice and they are great garden flower.