Welcome :-)

You're so lucky: your violets seem to be happy :-) Which one is it ? Do you know ?
You're right, they might grow everywhere and might be quite invasive (mainly depending on the one you have, some are not, some others are definitively): tear off some if there are too many and give them to your friends :-)
ENJOY them :-) The only adverse effect I know: to fall in love with them ! ;o) But there won't be any one for your garden: tulips don't care because they grow higher :-)

All the best :-)
Thierry.

Oh, they're invasive alright! I'm not sure what kind they are. They have small flowers that range from volet to white and when you pull them up they have small bulbs at thier roots. They don't pull up easiliy. They seen to spread by seed and, while they're not too large, they can grow anywhere- in the lawn, cracks in concrete, etc. I'm mostly worried that they'll rob other plants of nutrients or just plain choke them out.

I'm speaking not as a gardener, but as a lover of violets. I remember as a child in NC seeing ditchbanks carpeted with little purple violets, with the occasional white ones with purple streaks. They had heart-shaped leaves. What beauty! Because the ditchbank was not tended, my mother (an avid flower gardener) transplanted as many as she could to her yard. My opionion (biased, yes) is that you can never get enough violets, never mind too many!

Neil,

Yes, they can be invasive and they can crowd-out other plants. But it all depends on the species of violet and the other plants' robustness and vigour. Difficult to generalize.

Hmmm, perhaps I'll let them grow more but not go craxy. Thanks everyone!

And here I'm struggling to get the V. Odorata and Parma to keep growing! You are So Lucky!

in fairness and in a more general sense of gardening (!) i have heard the soroia type violets can be a true weed in certain settings. the selective broad-leaf herbicides also used for clover and flat weeds in lawns is also good for violets as weeds. i tend to be very conservative using such sprays, but still think they have a place. i mix according to the instructions, measuring carefully, and only use a small hand sprayer. i then carefully spot spray the worst areas and put any hand weeding time into more 'sensitive' areas. timing is important, too. there will be several generations of plants due to delayed seed germination. this might give the impression no progress has been made! try to spray the worst areas before the masses of non-flowering seed pods mature. chose a day and time with no wind to avoid drift onto other plants. spot spraying (of all chemicals) is far friendlier to wild life than mass spraying. my fairly new garden is open invitation to weeds. a neglected vacant block over my back fence grew a huge crop of thistles last summer.....and now i'm pulling those out! i've also inherited tobaccum sylvestris and papaver somniferum as 'blow ins' to newly dug over areas. despite my activities my garden has frogs. i have a few bromeliads in the shade house and saw a little frog peering out of the collected water in one some months back. i can hear the frogs calling in the evenings and during rain.
rob...

Here in Indiana we have violets that are not invasive. They are volunteers though. I have one that is a single plant but makes a mound about a foot across. I have several of these that I've allowed to stay in my flowerbeds and at the edges of the lawn. I wouldn't mind if they stayed in the lawn too, but hubby mows them down. Anyway, I don't know what kind these are, but they are beautiful, smell sweet and come in purple, lavender and an occasional white with purple spots. Most people consider them weeds, but I like them.

Lainey

I have some I suppose you would call invasive. We had to spray the yard and got rid of most there, they are tough little buggers, but I have devoted the whole, narrow, almost totally shady, west side of my house to violets, even marked the freckled ones which I see you can order from somebody's seed catalog. Orders are to mow one pass down the center only and no spraying. I may plant some other total shade loving flowers if there any among them, no hostas or foliage.

What else might be compatible with them? I'm having to hand pull the oxyalis, think it's lamb's quarters (soft leaves), and crab grass, and some other stuff and hand dig the dandelions ugh.

Because I've left them alone and it is shady, they have gotten very large. I love violets in the spring.

We also have a garden being taken over by violets- I think they are labradorica. We bought one 4-inch pot and now they are everywhere. They should come with a warning label! I do love the field of purple in the spring, and last week I actually found a few flowers- delightful! However, for my husband's birthday this year I went out and began to pull them all out. True love!! I've considered keeping a SMALL patch somewhere and cutting off the seed pods- is this perhaps a little too ambitious?

What we have found works very nicely as companions are amsonia, and a couple of varieties of campanula: telham beauty and another one I can't remember. All are blue/purple tones or white, do well with part shade, and each has a different leaf shape and texture. Between the three of them, we end up with flowers from April through August or September.

In Soutwest Pennsylvania we have purple and white violets growing in the yard, they don't seem invasive. I'm just glad to have them in the lawn, they are so pretty when they are mixed in with the yellow dandelions.