Plant or weed? Opinions please!

I had this in my front lawn. Self heal.

I have Ajuga in a small pot outside which a friend gave me. I've neglected it but still it thrives.
Wondering whether to plant it in a corner under a tree where nothing else will grow.

BlueBell that display is beautiful! Ok here goes; having read up today it does seem that it's Self Heal. From what I've seen Ajuga is taller. I will leave it as planned and see how things go. Thank you again; I love learning about this sort of stuff

Defitely not weed . Looks like this

🤣🤣🤣

I'll just head out to check before it gets dark

Apparently, they are not called weeds anymore. They are called pioneer plants. 🤓

RosiesMaw

Defitely not weed . Looks like this

😁
The smell of those is quite distinctive, Starof1972 said it didn't smell.

Nature abhors a vacuum, so wherever there is open ground something will appear there. So you can make use of that. If you want to dig over some ground but a bit at a time, and with plans to eventually put somethings particular there. Then I often use nasturiums . The are pretty and spread about and give you some pretty flowers for now. But , there are quite easy to get rid of.So I once lived next to a really unpleasant individual, who moved next door to me after a very lovely old lady had died. She wasnt able to garden a lot and was happy for me to grow things that went over the fence so I grew a lot of lovely clematis etc and she enjoyed them. when he arrived , instead of simply asking me to now keep them all on my side he just cut right through the lot. At the time I had cancer and felt I would not see them grow again. He also had horrible dandelions growing from under his fence and locked gate into my garden. I could not reach the roots without going into his garden or asking his permission which I had no intention of doing. So planted nasturtiums and they overwhelmed the dandelion and killed it off. Then when I was ready I just pulled them up and put the plants I wanted to grow. So you could try a mix of some of the deadnettles which have a variety of leaf colours. You could also plant cyclamen coum, which have lovely different leaf colours besides the flowers, or you could just plant small bulbs such as scylla, iris reticulata, iris danfordii and minature daffodils. They could just be planted into the bed and will come up through the vinca. Hope that might give you some good ideas.

Cyclamem is very pretty and seems to take a hold in inhospitable places.

Interesting about the nasturtiums killing off the dandelions, madeleine.

Don't know what the one with purple flowers is. But you have horse tail that green fringy plant but the side pull it out as soon as you see it . It's like fungi it travels under ground and you can't get rid of it permanently. But pull out as soon as you see it or it will grow everywhere .

That looks to me like something which has fallen off a confer such as leylandii, not mares tail.

The frond of green certainly is from a nearby leylandii - we have had to employ our local tree surgeon to tame them recently. It was interesting to learn about the nasturtiums and some good suggestions for future planting too. I do like cyclamen! Thanks again for the input.

As mentioned further upthread, it looks like common self heal or prunella vulgaris, the vulgaris bit meaning usual or to be found in lots of places. It was used for medicinal purposes time past and grows easily. Depends if you want little pockets of wild flowers in your garden. Very attractive to bees and butterflies.

My favourite weed of all time is shown here but I do intend leaving the purple patch alone for now.

It is Ajuga. Nominally a weed but - your choice!

It is self-heal for sure. I used to grow ajuga as I wanted ground cover in a self-contained raised bed. Ajuga is invasive, spreads everywhere and has slightly taller flowers than in the photo. The leaves are similar in shape but ajuga leaves are a bit more textured

Isn’t a weed just a flower growing in the wrong place

Love that GG👍

I have lots of ‘flowers growing in the wrong place’. At the moment corn poppies and rose bay willow herb are looking beautiful.

I find Ajuga fairly easy to stop being invasive. It sends out runners (a bit like strawberries do) and they root wherever they land. Very easy to cut off the runner, and/or pull up the opportunist plant. I pot them up and give them to a charity shop at which I volunteer .

I agree with the others, though; this is Self Heal as I have it in my garden too. I just chop off the heads when they are over.