Encouraging volunteer or wild plants - PEP BB gardening.straw.volunteerplants

Volunteers:
- Peas (volunteered from previous cover crop, nitrogen fixer) in my flower bed (soapwort, daisies, crocuses, echinacea, tulips, sun chokes)
- Fennel (re-seeded itself, attracts pollinators) in an herb bed (comfrey, marjoram, oregano, onions, alyssum)
- Hairy vetch (re-seeded itself for the second year in a row from a cover crop) in my fallow bed (full of volunteer sun chokes, wheat, leeks, peas, and weeds)
- Lemon balm (sprouted from seeds carried by wind from a plant several yards away, shades out weeds while I wait for the yarrow sprouts to get big enough to do it on their own. Then I harvest them for food/medicine as they become competition) in my aspiring yarrow/thyme/clover lawn area

Wild:
- Lambs quarter (erosion prevention, food) in my fallow bed (full of volunteer sun chokes, wheat, leeks, peas, and weeds)
- Clover (nitrogen fixer, soil shader) in the recently-revamped perennial flower border (daffodils, iris, day lilies that provide shade for shrubs that don't love full sun)
- Plantain (medicine) in a part-shade raised bed (walking onions, carrots, ground nuts, alyssum, clover, and soon others)
- Fungus (not technically a plant, but a compost-maker) in the wood chips of an herb bed (comfrey, marjoram, oregano, onions, alyssum)

I encouraged them all by selective chop & drop (chopping their competition and their siblings where were less-ideally placed) and by keeping them watered.