Nigella or love-in-a-mist is a classic cottage garden flower, long-loved for easy growth, free-flowering ways, and decorative seedpods. Grow in containers, the front of borders, or cut flower gardens. The inflated striped seed pods make perfect dried flowers; fresh-cut flowers are charming combined with calendulas and other small spring annuals. Also, it is an excellent tulip and small bulb companion, its fresh foliage hiding but never smothering, the fading bulb foliage, and the flowers add another season of bloom. Deadhead to prolong flowering or allow the decorative seedpods to develop. Self-sows.