Please help me to refine my plant-based snobbery

[rowan1971]

There's an article in the Guardian today about plants that people dislike, to the extent that it might actually put them off buying a house.

Now, I'll be frank - as a gardener, I make a very good sunbather. But I had no idea that some of these plants were regarded as undesirable. I mean, magnolias are lovely, surely? What's not to like about geraniums? You don't even have to water 'em! Make the place look all Italian!

Are the people who participated in this survey hopelessly under-employed, or am I missing something?

the survey was done by a gardening channel so probably only about 10 people took part

personally i love my privet

It's the kind of snobbery for people who have too much time on their hands to worry about what other people will think. Also, goes in phases. Like, dahlias are (or were) totally naff - well, that just makes me want more of em. The little beauties!

I love lilacs.

I'm soooo naff!

So plants beginning with L seem problematic?

Hmm, not a fan of leylandii (sp) I must admit but it certainly didn't put me off buying our new house, which has a few in the back. DH is going to rip them up and replace them with raspberry bushes. Lovely.

I have lillies in my garden

And lots of heather in my flowerbeds

we have a huge wisteria,(thats on the list) its gorgeous, how people can dislike it .. its beyond me, its part of the reason we bought our house !

Funny how The Guardian has changed. It used to be quite spacious. Now it tells you what to think.

I might be put off if the neighbours had leylandii, but in the garden of a house I wanted to buy? CHAINSAW.

I have nothing naff in my garden, I don't think, but probably plenty to put a buyer off. I have a Japanese maple, some irises that refuse to flower, some lilies likewise, a giant lavender bush, a giant rosemary bush which has gone brown, a small thyme bush which fallen over, son-of-next-door's-buddleia, a giant weed, a tiny conifer (oh, that's an offensive one, isn't it?), a pink thing, another giant weed, a thing that has berries in the autumn, a rather good bay tree, and two variegated things. And some grass. And some plastic toys. And a slow worm.

It's a garden for, erm ... people who ... I don't know. Like slow worms?

LOL Don'tCallMeBaby (fave gym song)

Your garden sounds like the twin of my garden. Except that we have a truly enormous poplar tree (I think it's a poplar, but really wouldn't put money on it) that I suspect is going to fall on our house and kill us all one day. But hey, it looks nice.

Don'tcallmebaby you lucky thing having a slow worm.
I have got all the things on the list except privet.

I normally seem to have a frog in the garden (no pond, just a landlocked frog). Every year I leave it too late to mow the lawn, an amphibian moves in, and I freak out when I finally do mow the lawn, and a frog leaps out. I'm terrified of actually MOWING the frog. This year I was all keen-eyed looking out for the frog, and I got a slow worm instead. It was quite cute really, once I'd stopped leaping about and shouting 'WTF was that?' thinking it was the biggest and fastest earthworm in the world. Once I'd calmed down I did what any right-thinking person would do - took its photo and wrote a blog entry about it.