If I'd only known

[Enb76]

Which plant would you recommend that other people never plant?

I have a few and every time I seem them for sale in gardening centres I have the urge to burn and destroy.

Mine are:

Acanthus Spinosus (Bears Breeches). Never plant this unless you have many, many acres, spreads by rhizome. This is a thug of a plant which is almost impossible to kill off.

Passiflora (Passion Flower). Grows while you watch it, one evening you'll go to bed and by the next morning it will have taken over your world. It will creep into the smallest gap and is almost impossible to kill.

Sapponaria Officinalis (Soapwort) - free seeds like a bugger, doesn't die.

Most of them have the common sin of being difficult to kill off - there are other plants that I would never recommend purely because I've not been able to keep them alive but that is a much longer list.

Omg just googled bear breeches - horrific. Had sneered at it without knowing what it was. Like a triffid lupin.

siameasy - love the description the flower buds are spiky too. Bloody plant. I'll find a way to kill it this year!

I regularly slag off certain plants and insects to DH who looks jaded by it all
If we're going to slag off insects too, I'll start with fucking Lily beetles (that's a description not an expletive) and their slimy spawn.

😂😂It’s name is so ugly too! It’s like a weird Gunnery/Hogweed leaf and really imposing! If you look close up the flowers do look evil

I had a wild Mullein growing in the front garden and it reached about 6 feet tall. Then we became known as the house with the Penis Plant
Thank god it didn't come back this year. Never again.

Hollyhocks. Breed like rabbits and grows mostly big green leaves, not pretty flowers like I imagined

How can you say this? It’s wrong and bad. Hollyhocks are beautiful and make me very happy.

Omg just googled bear breeches - horrific. Had sneered at it without knowing what it was. Like a triffid lupin.

No wonder bears can be grizzly...

Passiflora

I really want one of these! I didn’t get one in the end, as I didn’t have a space on a sunny wall for it to grow up!

Are they really that bad??

Haven’t seen them Errol but their larva look vile
I’m rage with slugs of course but I’m about to go on an earwig patrol with a torch as something is nibbling my sunflowers and I’m convinced it’s an earwig

Do earwigs eat sunflowers? Didn't know that! Have nurtured mine from seed but I'll have to burn the lot if they attract earwigs. I hate earwigs so much the bastards.

Well years ago I grew sunflowers on a high balcony and I was confused because they were being nibbled. I went out there at night and a large earwig was looking right at me mid nibble. It looked comical - it really was looking straight at me.

But I’ve returned from earwig patrol with no sightings

You absolute heathens not liking passion flower... I have a hideous never ending wall down the side of the house garden so I have alternating passion flower, honey suckle and jasmine. They make me happy.

Raspberries in the other hand can fuck off. I think I'll need napalm to get the last of the roots.

Lemon balm! It gets everywhere! Hate it
But my alcamella mollis doesn't spread ... and I don't mind verbena Bonasaris self seeding but I hate all the euphorbia seedlings!

Sedum acre - it will cover an acre in no time ... LOL! - though "acre" just means bitter

Why do people buy Euphorbia-I think it’s so ugly Euphorbia mellifera has a lovely honey scent.

Boston Ivy - by the time it had gone up 2 storeys, I realised I wsn't going to be able to keep it from getting under the slates on the roof, that even cutting it to base it was capable of getting back up there in a year, and there was no solution other than removal. Lonicera henryii - an evergreen honeysuckle with pinkish apricot flowers followed by berries - completely swamped the apple tree in the car park next door. I've cut it off at the base and am hoping the dead entanglements in the tree will rot away in time. The birds aren't happy with me though.

I used to know a gardener who had one of the tiniest gardens I've seen ... every single plant he gave me has romped away and tried to take over the whole garden. I've had to get rid of all of them.

Can I add Carex pendula to the top of the list of thugs.
Hate the bloody stuff and even though no one in my road grows the nasty beast it still manages to seed itself from the lump in the pub garden at the end of the street.

I've got brilliant london soil so most shrubs grow like weeds.
Ceanothus git like a tree in 3 years so has to go as it nearly pulled the fence over. Ditto honeysuckle and now jasmine. Next door planted some bamboo I battle with it as it keeps trying to overtake my beautiful climbing rose.
And taking of roses I I'll advisedly planted a rambler last year. It's gone nuts.
My topiary bay tree is huge despite me hacking at it regularly.
DH bought me a magnolia grandiflora. Very sadly that had to be cut down after 3 years. It was (not slow growing) and went from twig to 30ft high in 3 years
Next door is a gardener and she inherited a mysterious huge tree at the end of her garden turns out it's not a tree but a shrub gone wild. It's all most as tall as the house!

I keep killing clematis though. One minute beautiful and covered in flowers, the next buren and dead.

And the slugs this year 🐌. Fuckers. Nematodes. Oh yes.

I'm surprised at some of the negs on this thread but I guess it shows how every garden is different.
My sibling has a passiflora contained in a small area on a wall. Crocosmia also in control and not wanting to spread.

Pressed too soon.

On the other hand like @lightlypoached lol my mum's London soil sounds exactly the same! Cordyline and bag tree have grown huge and so they had to cut down the cordyline as it looked like it was going to fall but it will probably regrow from the base. Crocosmia looking healthy and spreading but contained by other plants grown in front of it.

I've only been gardening for a few months but so far no negs. Just the huge tree behind the garden which sends out seedlings and I keep finding them even after going through the entire garden which isn't even big.

Oh and I second lemon balm. And mint 😬

Hottuniya Cordata

Horrible, smelly, invasive beast of a plant that I’ve just had to learn to live with as it WILL NOT DIE!

Hottuniya Cordata

It's very pretty - is it really smelly? I see one of its names is fish mint!

Smells like tom cat wee to me. It is pretty but it is evil.

Flippin buddleia. Christ on a bike I hate this big standard weed that people seem to love even though there are more of these growing as weeds in this country than dandelions. They are everywhere and people still pay money for them.

I once was a head gardener and I sent everyone out in the first week to dig up the carex pendulas that were growing on site, and another day we tackled all the buddleias. They are both arseholes.

i love my buddleia! My beautiful butterfly bush!