Not being the gardening type, are these weeds? they look interesting to me..

Thistle.

weeds are plants you don’t want…

Although thistles are not really kid friendly with their prickles.

will they take over the garden if i leave them or do they need to be destroyed?
i have lots of unknown plants which look interesting but keep turning out to be weeds. i may post back later 😉

i should also mention, you cant get the scale of that pic but they are 5 feet tall!

Echinops ritro Taplow Blue I expect

Thats an ornimental thistle not a wild type so in simple terms its not a weed.

A weed is any plant you don’t want in your garden.

they appear to be what thepurist said

https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=Echinops+ritro+Taplow+Blue&btnG=Search+by+image

weed or not they look great imo, keeping them for when they flower

Dobo the bees love em and the dead flowers can stand through the winter and look good with a frost, then just chop to the ground when they start looking tatty. Goldfinches will go for the seeds too. They do self seed a bit but are easy enough to hoik out if you catch them young.

A weed is any plant you don’t want in your garden

In the simplest sense.

We have Echinops like this in our garden and we think it’s one of our best late summer plants. There are bees all over them from about now onwards and the plants don’t really spread much from year to year so won’t take over.

there is a simple test to tell if is a plant or a weed…….jump on it with both feet. if it dies its a plant and you should keep it. if it refuses to die its a weed