How to grow verbena bonierensis from someone who has it as a weed.

Many gardeners have trouble growing this plant but here's a bit of advice. Take it or leave it.
Consider where it self seeds - between paving slabs on the sunny side of the garden. That's its situation of choice. Not too particular about quality of soil but likes dry heat.
You need to provide this. Lay some slabs or similar in a dryish ( not a desert)very sunny spot and sprinkle your seeds in the cracks.
If that doesn't work, perhaps you need to try to grow something else.
I post this in frustration. VB is a PITA here but I wouldn't do without it.

 

I love it but have learnt to accept that it doesn’t particularly like my garden. The soil is too heavy and wet (overwinter) especially in the sunniest spots. I get the odd one pop up now and then, self seeded, but they never bulk up and each plant probably only lasts 2 years max.

 

Mine never seeds anywhere! I've given up on it. Grows well as an annual, but that's all. Not dry enough or hot enough, sadly.

 

@Butterfly6 . I think you're right. It doesn't like to be wet.
It needs to be treated mean. Heavy soil is fine so long as it isn't wet. It's the most abundant weed on one side of my garden and totally absent on the other side.

 

As someone who gardens in very wet Wales on a clay/shale soil, I'd agree with what it likes. The last 2 years have been very wet, and my VB just tolerated it. This spring was very dry and suddenly I have seedlings everywhere! And they do best at the edges near path stones. I'd give them away, but there aren't many gardeners around me.

 

Same here, although I am on sand and it is always dry but more so this Spring, there are seedlings coming up everywhere.

 

Nice plant but to keep it going I had to lift it and over winter in an unheated greenhouse. Got a bit fed up with that so you won’t need 3 guesses what I don’t have growing in my garden any more!

 

I have to do a similar process here @hailbopp . I take cuttings as backup though [they're very easy] and put those undercover, and the main plants have to be up against walls/fences, in raised beds, with other good planting [evergreen] in front of them, to successfully, and reliably overwinter them. I can understand why you don't bother now though!
Our wet cold [plus frost/ice/snow] is no use for them, and clay soil, even when improved, doesn't always mean they'll live through winters here, even with the climate changing noticeably.

 

I have a very large one in the front garden - in it's 3rd year now and thriving. I've also grown it in other parts of the garden without much trouble and find it self seeds happily if not dead headed.