I would have no compunction about growing any of them in my garden. Poisonings by plants are extremely rare and kids don’t tend to graze on people’s gardens. If they’re so young they are still shoving anything at all in their mouths they shouldn't be unsupervised anyway. More children are poisoned by their parents’ alcohol, tobacco and medicines than are ever harmed by garden plants.

I agree with floral 100%. And I have gardened all my life with pets and at one time, with small children :-) And with all of the plants you list as well as a whole bunch more that could be added to the "toxic" list.

The number of plants with some toxic properties far outnumber those that have none. A great many commonly grown plants - including a fair amount of edibles (vegetables and fruits) - are poisonous or toxic to some degree if ingested........or the wrong part ingested. If this were that big a concern, they would not be selling the things in the grocery stores, let alone encouraging one to the plant their own!!

If you were to ban or remove from gardens and landscapes ALL plants that possess some toxic properties, then we would be living in very bare, sterile and empty surroundings. And very like going hungry as well!! Educate yourself and train your kids. Better yet, teach them to garden and understand plants and their defense mechanisms.

Thank you both!

stay at home dad in the day ...

fill a snack baggie with some goldfish crackers.. and hand them to the kids as they walk out the door..

tell them when its empty.. to bring it back for more..

and tell them if they dont bring it back.. no more tomorrow ...

and tel them they eat NOTHING from the yard.. EVER ... until they learn what to eat ... e.g. raspberries.. or veg.. etc ..

train your children.. then train your dog. and then you have little to worry about ... it you skip either.. no use complaining ... you gotta teach those kids everything.. and i mean EVERYTHING ... sometimes you think the dog is easier to teach ...or they learn faster .. lol ...

ken

I think as long as the toxin is not deadly at touch or inhalation that should be all right. I was nervous when planting the fox glove. It did not come back this spring and I kind of felt relieved.

Foxglove, Digitalis purpurea, is widely naturalized in my area. You can see fields of it growing in forested clear-cuts and they pop up spontaneously in area gardens. There are always a half dozen or so in my garden at any given time. I leave them to self seed and just pull those that are growing where not wanted.

With this abundance of plants, to my knowledge no one here has ever been accidentally poisoned by foxglove. There is nothing about the plant that would encourage consumption - no appealing berries or fruit, just leaves and flowers and eventually dried seed heads. It has no contact toxicological effects. It must be ingested to be of any concern.

Foxgloves self-sow right amongst my vegetables. They don’t give me a moment’s concern. As kids we would happily put a flower on each finger for fun. It did not occur to us to eat them. We knew not to. But why would we anyway? They don’t look remotely like food.

If all our toxic plants presented a real danger, we'd have sick/dead people all over the world. Not a real problem.

I'd feel comfortable growing any of them either now when I only have dogs or when I had small children and dogs.

I supervise closely until I am secure in their training.

And that training is pretty simple- don't eat stuff out of the yard.

I will add that my dogs are out in the gardens with me as I am working or just admiring it.

They are not turned outside and left all day with nothing to do but find ways to amuse themselves- that would not be conducive to gorgeous gardens.

It's that type situation that leads to problems.

So my advice would be to gauge your plant choice along side your degree of supervision- if there is none then don't plant dangerous things.

But in a well managed garden with competent supervision I'd not worry- I or my husband are certainly not going to eat them so as long as my dogs are well trained and adequately supervised I'm OK.

Now- would I plant a castor bean plant?

No, there's no need and the degree of toxicity is alarming.

But for things like lilies and hollies and hydrangeas and rhododendrons and all the bulbs etc.-then no, I do not worry about that.

My kids were quite often disaster-prone - endless concussions, grazes, cuts, bruises and several attempts to poke undesirable obects into ears, noses and so on. None of them ever ate a garden plant and got ill. Life can be risky but our alternatives are to stay in bed with the covers over our heads.

Something I do find a little concerning is the ’foraging’ vogue amongst people who do not know their plants. This isn’t a question of the odd nibble of an iffy leaf but of deliberately gathering large quantities and making a meal of them. I once stopped a woman and her child picking ’elderberries’. She said was going to make a ‘winter tonic’ for the kid. Her basket was full of privet berries.

"Something I do find a little concerning is the ’foraging’ vogue amongst people who do not know their plants."

It's concerning the way a lot of things are concerning- as in the world has gone mad and people have lost their damn minds.

But it's not concerning for me personally as I do not forage nor do I allow anyone else to do it on my property.

If people wander in wild areas and haven't the sense to identify what they are collecting to consume, well- I'd say something about natural selection but...

Crikey.

I certainly ‘forage‘ myself. Always have, but I’ve never given it that name nor done it on private property. And I know what I’m picking.

If kids would stuff things in their mouths, then they need to be supervised and taught not to do that. In the garden or elsewhere. Pets are usually smart enough not to eat poison plants, though they do sometimes eat irritating ones. I wouldn't assume the other gardener has no experience with kids- she might be well experienced and able to supervise/teach kids, pets, or other visitors to her garden. If you have kids or pets, just be a responsible parent or pet owner and teach/supervise them and you shouldn't have to worry about it.

There's a lot of toxic plants out there. Or toxic parts. Like tomatoes- you can eat the fruit, but not the plant, potatoes- you can eat the tubers, but not the plant and not the tubers if they are green. Rhubarb, you can eat the ribs, but the leaves can potentially make you ill, and kidney beans can make you ill if they aren't prepared correctly before cooking with them. Asparagus spears are tasty, but the berries can make you sick.

There are different kinds of poppies, several of them are popular in gardens. The plants are toxic- opium poppies plant juice is where natural opium and opates come from. The seeds are low in the toxins and considered edible- that's why opium poppies are also often called breadseed poppies. Labs synthesize it now instead of growing it for medicine- drug lords still grow the plant for the more illegal versions. Foxglove has long been used as a potent medicine and heart drug- a little is helpful, but a lot can kill. It's chemicals are now created in a lab and sold as digoxin, helping a few hundred thousand paitents live every year.

Heck, grass isn't actually toxic, but it can make humans sick if we eat it because our bodies are not set up to digest it properly. But a lot of us have grass in our yards anyway without worry.

Many thanks to everyone who has responded! <3 I've read all the comments but haven't had a chance to respond to each individually. I loved Ken's idea of the goodie bag, and think I'm going to look more closely at what the extent of the toxicity is for each plant. Skin rash, upset tummy, and vomiting/diarrhea are obviously not as bad as neurological problems, respiratory distress, seizures, or death. It is reassuring to hear that most of you wouldn't hesitate to grow any of these plants in your own gardens. I think I've come to the conclusion that it isn't *necessary* to grow all of them (in mine)...garden space is limited, and there are plenty of other plants I wouldn't mind trying instead. While I obviously wouldn't eat any of this stuff myself, nor leave any pets or kids unsupervised, the neighborhood pets and kids do run into the front yard every once in a while, and I wouldn't want the moral accountability for any accidents happening on our property. You would think that everyone's kids would be "trained," but sometimes kids don't listen, and sometimes there are other reasons/circumstances such as learning disabilities. That said, I think I'm going to give the larkspur seeds back to the gardener I got them from...and hope that it doesn't upset her :(

"the neighborhood pets and kids do run into the front yard every once in a while"

My rear gardens with all the pricey and exotic plants are behind six feet of fencing.

The front of my home is indeed unfenced so it is fair game for roaming pets, deer, kids, and random walkers.

I have nothing very interesting in the front.

Mainly because I don't like working in the front- I'm not social and every walker and half the cars will try to say hello or talk or ask questions about something- I find that horrific, lol. So my front is boring and easy to maintain. It's nice and neat but nothing exotic or fussy. Deer eat anything nice, even so far as coming onto my porches to eat potted plants. So I use same old same old every year and keep it very simple.

ALL my good stuff is behind locked gates.

You can have it both ways!

and think I'm going to look more closely at what the extent of the toxicity is for each plant.

==>>

knowledge is power.. and all that.. but i dont think you really 'heard us' ....

i used to joke.. the lawn is rather inert ... but if you go out there.. dead drunk.. and fall face first into it.. and then proceed to eat a bellyful .. well.. you are going to get sick... soooo ... then dont do it.. and get some AA help and all that .. [i suppose that would be teaching yourself...]

and who cares if the drunk next door wants at your lawn.. you arent going to get rid of it because of that raging alcoholic ...

do what you need to make yourself happy ... and have a good day

ken

I have monkshood in my garden. Every part of the plant is poisonous. I have never had any problem working around it. We have always had pets who have the run of the yard. My grandson has been forbidden to eat any plant in my border. If I share divisions I always make sure to mention its toxicity. My only confusion about poisonous plants in my garden is whether there’s any potential danger from putting the foliage into the compost. I can never find any information on this. If the poison persists in the compost and it subsequently gets used in the vegetable garden, is that an issue?

I’ve taken to leaving perennial foliage over the winter and cleaning up in the spring, which is much easier, but it’s not possible then to distinguish what I’m composting.

What do you knowledgeable gardeners think?

Please ignore the underlined parts. Not sure how that happened.

I can never understand why people get so worried about plants poisoning their dogs or cats. Animals are not stupid. Let me repeat that -- ANIMALS ARE NOT STUPID. They have God-given innate abilities that allow them to discern if something is safe to eat or not.

I have a lot of monkshood and probably a lot of other things that are poisonous that I don't know about. My dog is free to roam over a good chunk of the property. The dog is alive and doing well.

"My only confusion about poisonous plants in my garden is whether there’s any potential danger from putting the foliage into the compost."

No danger.......unless you plan to eat a lot of your unfinished compost :-) Compost is often referred to as the great neutralizer, as the composting process tends to break down all chemical compounds into relatively harmless elements. And there is no scientific evidence that any potential toxins contained in one plant type are transferred or taken up by any others.

mxk3, you are wrong about animals not being stupid, lol. We have to muzzle our dog for his walks because he eats cigarette butts which the vet says is very bad.

Thanks gardengal. That puts my mind to ease.

People ask on forums all the time, versions of "is this plant OK for my pet to eat - because my pet just ate some."

"We have to muzzle our dog for his walks because he eats cigarette butts which the vet says is very bad."

I don't doubt they are. But I bet the dog would probably vomit before he ate too many of them to do any real damage. And if he over-rides that or whatever defense mechanism he should have against over-ingestion? Well, that circles back to natural selection...

So we breed and domesticate dogs to the point where there is virtually no wild animal left in many of them, and then let them "evolve" while taking a walk? Not sure that is practical.

Before people had Google to tell them which plants were toxic, they figured it out by tasting tiny bits of things. Plant toxicity is a form of self defense to prevent being eaten and as a general rule, toxic compounds in plants taste terrible. It’s natures way of warning us!

Toxicity in edible plants from things in the soil like arsenic probably present a greater risk than plant phytotoxins in common ornamentals.

It's essential to be cautious with what you grow in your front yard. Personally, I'd be cautious about larkspurs and lupines due to their potential dangers. I'd rather stick to safer options like daffodils and hardy mums, which you mentioned. It's always better to err on the side of caution when it comes to plants that can be harmful, especially if there are kids in the neighborhood.

Ignore the above. Daffodils are toxic, possibly more so than Lupins. But, as we discussed fully months ago, there is very little real danger from growing 'toxic' plants in your garden.

And how about those ubiquitous yews? Highly toxic--except to deer who absolutely love them.