Plants you really wouldn't have in your garden

I think that with time you change or refine your likes and dislikes based on the way a plant develops, combines with other plants, suffers from the weather damage or gets attacked by pests or disease.

I like Euphorbias, but now only grow the green leaved ones because the variegated and dark ones grew too slowly and made little impact here. Also, I don't grow large grasses anymore due to the wind, rain and snow damage they suffer. Blackspot on roses put me off them for a while, but I'm having another go this year. Hostas are allowed to remain another year, now that I have removed all the ones in the ground and the ones in pots have been elevated above easy climbing level. We'll see .

 

There are a number of things that I've thought would do well in my garden that have failed to deliver, some have then died and will not be replaced; the problem are the ones that continue to grow, but fail to flower or provide foliage colour how long do I leave them to deliver whip them out after a couple of years or wait until I'm remodelling that area.

 

I absolutely can't stand flowering currant - dull not-pink-but-not-red flowers, and a (to me) nasty smell. I dislike shrubs clipped into blobs, lollipops etc unless they are small-leaved evergreens like box etc (and I'm not a massive fan of those). Particularly bad when it's something like forsythia or lilac that's just not meant to look like that! I do like my forsythias - they're suspensa which is a lighter clearer yellow than some, more-or-less matches the classic yellow daffodils, perfect for spring. Allowed to grow long arching stems that flower all along the length. Looking great just now.

 

I don't like euphorbias either.

 

I bought one a couple of months ago - was taken by its lovely glossy foliage in the garden centre. Was quite crestfallen to realise that it was really just another type of laurel! But at least mine's not the spotted type, and it's growing happily in my difficult shady border.

 

Even worse than the lollipop trees is people who just cut the tops of their trees off. It's like they have a buzz cut. I always wonder why they planted a tree, if they didn't want a tree?

 

Yes indeed! There's a front garden near us with a conifer that's been sliced off horizontally at about waist height. What's left is about a metre in diameter, green around the outside but showing the cut trunk and all the brown branches inside. Why they didn't just cut the whole thing down I don't know. The house was up for sale a few years ago so I think it was planted by previous owners.

 

There is special part of hell reserved for those people who let the leylandii hedge grow over the pavement and then cut it back hard leaving just an ugly brown wall. Either look after it properly or take it out and plant something that will cope with hard pruning, even Privet or Lonicera nitidia.

 

Clipped blobs abound in the gardens in my neighbourhood. I’ve watched the “gardeners” employed by two neighbours clipping all the shrubs and conifers in their front gardens every fortnight. They are plants that don’t need more than an annual prune, if at all. Paying to have your plants tortured on a subscription basis should be a punishable offence .

 

I can remember seeing a thread posted on BBC Gardening Forum (remember that place?) back in 2005 which was similar.

However the plants mentioned were much different to what has been mentioned on this thread. The main culprit I remember was Pampas Grass but so far only 1 person has mentioned it.
To me this thread shows how attitudes have changed in 20 years towards certain plants.

Although maybe Pampas Grass is just been hated out of extinction since 2005 and so the average gardener doesn't know what it is.

 

Also with the addition of the last posts within the past 24 hours I now have 89% of plants mentioned in this thread.

 

@Jungle Jane it may just be that gardens are often smaller now, and so garden centres don't bother so much with it - it got massive! I dug one out of my mother's garden and it took a mattock (see other thread!), a saw, and lots of paper hankies for the blood from the razor sharp edges to the leaves.
Ok, I dislike pampas grass.

 

I like pampas grass .
Looks good in the middle of a spawning lawn, but agreed it gets too big for the average garden.
I believe there are smaller varieties.

Tbh, it's probably the only grass I would grow if I had the space.
Lots of things come and go, it's mostly what is fashionable these days.
Without fashions gardening would stand still.

Which is why I can never understand all these restorations of gardens to a particular era, pick a date and recreate it.
It's crazy imo.

 

We've got a pampas grass! It "flowers" in winter so is quite nice to look at. At the moment our forsythia is flowering away. And the Ribes is just starting.

I don't like green flowers or shrubs that drop leaves e.g. Red Robin is always dropping its leaves. Otherwise I'm not that fussy. I have to say MD's garden on GW does lack colour so I'd put everything of his on here!

 

It was the first thing I got rid of in the UK garden. Slap bang in the middle of the lawn, the plumes never amounted to much and I wanted to make a pond so it had to go. I didn't realise that there were several families of mice living in it! Still, the pond provided a habitat for a much wider selection of wildlife