I have the same problem Owen. No growth where you want them particularly, but come up in the most strangest of places. At work we have just had our spring weed spraying program around our premises. We have orange coloured poppies growing all around our astro-pitch which survive this herbicidal battery each year, where all other weeds/plants perish.
Empty paint tin and lid plus half gallon of unleaded,fuse make hole in lid thread Fuse bury the tin in your back garden 1 foot deep exposing fuse cover with earth light fuse after the debris has settled down scatter poppies seeds and next year you will reap the benefit
Do Yellow Poppies count? They have spread all round the garden, they just appeared and spread year by year. Probably self set from bird droppings. A neighbour claims they came from his son who calls them Welsh Poppies. The Brigadier has moaned about them for years, she calls them weeds, as she does the bluebell "Dutch hyacinths" that invaded the garden at one time. The targets of her wrath are now the Sycamore seedlings. I quite like the poppies as they add a bit of colour early on in the garden.
Jealous of the selfseeded Welsh poppies, as mentioned earlier in thread had no luck with those either. We do ok with Oriental & California poppies. I wish all the Papaver rhoeas seeds would germinate.
A Royal Canadian Legion poppy: I usually try and have a few, to place at Canadian graves or memorials. When worn - and irrespective of risk assessments - the pin really does seem to keep the poppy attached to the wearer better than the plastic stemmed design. And not forgetting, John McCrae was a Canadian.
Poppies at the end of the platform at Gioia Del Coll, a good friend was lightly wounded by a booby trap in Gioia