PlantFiles: Common Flax, Linseed
Linum usitatissimum

Though very growable for non-aesthetic reasons (fiber, seeds for nutriment or drying oil), it is best grown en masse. Just a few plants clumped together in a new bed of mostly dirt is not a particularly pretty sight. Tall, lanky and rangy. Not a specimen plant. Very nice when massed though, as I have seen in others gardens.
And otherwise, for all those other reasons, wonderful species. I definitely plan to grow more of it.. just lots more, not a little.

For gardening purposes, I just love Flax in mass.

Each year I toss a good handful about the area where
my hollyhocks grow. As the season progresses, the
hollyhocks tend to drop their lower leaves. The flax
fills in foliage where the missing foliage once was, and
it looks very nice.

I love the way flax bows in the wind, with it's pretty blue tips
and tiny blooms.

A delicate but very easy annual.

Although flax seed is sold in most health food stores, and is considered to have many healthful and medicinal quantities, in its raw state it can cause respiratory failure and death when consumed in large quantities. Care should be taken with livestock; they should not be allowed to graze on pastures where it grows in large quantities.