If I'd only known

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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.

Had to take my pampas grasses out with an axe but suspect choice of implement was partly out of frustration and surpressed rage from childhood. I remember crashing my bike into one when I was about 8.

Bestlswest that beastie is carex pendula otherwise known as a weeping sedge and it makes me weep every spring when I have to search the garden to remove its seedlings.

I have removed it all from my garden but still get little baby ones trying to hide at the backs of boarders that seeds from a plant at the end of my road. Each one of those ends will release 100s of seeds.

They are a nightmare to dig out and are one of the few plants I resorted to using systematic weedkiller on. I cut ihem down to about a foot tall and then sprayed them every week for a month whilst charting “die you bastard”.

Sorry I couldn't resist

I was admiring a carex pendula in my neighbour's garden
As a rule I don't like ornamental grasses (in my garden at least). Seems I've picked one of the most annoying to admire! It's growing right behind my fence too so I'd better watch out...

I've tried to grow acanthus for years after seeing a long border of it next to a stately home which I think was in Hampshire. It looked impressive and likely to suppress any weeds.
However I'm in Scotland and they've never really taken off. Have a couple of miserable wee specimens but the deer eat them in the winter so I don't think they'll get much bigger.

I had a strip of spiraea when I first moved here to an overgrown garden - the more common one which had spread over 6 metres. Nightmare digging out the roots from stony ground.

Planted mint in a bottomless pot in the veg patch - roots still spread for miles in one season.
Sarah Raven says euphorbia is her favourite flower arranging plant, it does look beautiful in her catalogues.
Fuschia is my problem. I had ground cover fabric and bark beside it, that seems to have encourage the roots and now have several clumps of it and v difficult to remove. It's the wild one that grows in hedgerows in Ireland.

I planted a acanthus two years ago in a newly built raised bed at the front of my house. I have a large driveway in a corner house and I wanted it to grow big to block off the view into my lounge from the road opposite. The slugs ate it within days and I replaced it with another know horror that is an cardoon. The cardoon has romped away, the bees love it and it does the job I wanted it to but come the end of summer I know I am going to have to spend an afternoon thinning it out As in two years one plant has turned into at least 3 plants.

I sold the cordyline that the previous owners left in a pot.

My forget me nots have taken over and I've had to take them out of the front of the veg bed so something else can grown.

Last year my tomatoes grew NO fruits and hardly any flowers. This year they have flowers now (and I have about 12 plants, all healthy) but I suspect the cold weather has delayed their fruiting.

Everyone said don't grow babies' tears as they will take over but I want them to take over as I'd rather have them than gravel or weeds in the gaps in the patio.

I cut back the wisteria the previous owner left. My mum suggested weedkiller. And I accidentally got rid of the honeysuckle because the trellis fell down when I tried to prune it.

I like lemon balm but it wasn't supposed to take over the pot it was sharing with alpine strawberries which is IN THE SHADE. The lemon balm clearly hadn't read the instruction manual that says it prefers sun.

Someone said Don't plant Acquilega!
Faints away in shock!

It's my absolutely favourite plane.
I have about 17 varieties and love how it pops up unexpectedly everywhere

And Euphorbia! Again a favourite of mine.

I struggle to grow sweetpeas.
Had a fantastic show one year but usually it's only the everlasting variety that blossoms well.

ErroltheDragon here's the thuggish plant!
Does anyone know what it is please? It grows anywhere and everywhere and is about 2' tall, bright blue short-lived flowers that seed themselves freely.
Many thanks!

This thread makes me very sad. Many of these 'problem' plants are beautiful and, depending what soil/position/location, can be controllable/successful.

A weed is only a plant in the wrong place.

I think the opposite, this thread is great!

Too many people buy a pretty plant with zero research then pull up and bin it when it turns out to be far too big/too spready/too self seedy/too fragrant/not fragrant enough etc etc

I adore acquilegia but it will not grow in my garden.

My DS spent 4 hours yesterday digging out one of the Carex Pendulas ( Thanks for the Id btw). The other one to be done this weekend. Now have a lovely empty border waiting to be filled.

I like this thread and have most of the plants mentioned😁
If I like something then I am prepared to do the maintenance to keep it manageable even if it does have thug like tendencies.

I like acquilegia but have found they never self seed true to the original so all the pretty blues and pinks ended
up giving me sludge coloured babies which ended up in the compost bin.

Acanthus simply refuses to grow in my garden.

I’ve been trying really hard to get alchemilla going and it keeps disappearing on me.

How? Why?

Lemon balm grows like billyo though.

I having trouble to grow Acanthus as well, I I have a sneaking suspicion the dog wee on it when I’m not looking.

If anyone is still around in the spirit of this thread, should I plant this vitis coignetiae?

Crimson glory vine
It’s to cover a shed but now I’m thinking we might replace shed with one of those summer houses, so maybe not

Vigorous on the RHS website...probably depends on how big the shed is! And your garden is.....

True, garden is long (100ft), shed medium size. Ugly old shed but painting it dark has helped.

I feel sorry for the plant if I don’t ; and I do like red in autumn. But someone might say oh no I planted that and it was a nightmare!

It is a nightmare. It will grow 5 metres tall and the spread will be treble that.

Ah ok thanks
Won’t plant

Have a hideous Pampas grass out the front. I'd love to dig it out but I'd have get the wall in the middle of it rebuilt. Crocosmia, I have to pull this up all the time. I'm always amazed when I see it for sale in garden centres and I can't get rid of it. Same with Aquilegia. Don't be fooled by dwarf Buddlea. It might be for the first year but it certainly isn't after that. If there was a nuclear war that would be the only living thing left. Lemon balm and Verbena are both currently taking over and I can't believe I bought Erigeron when it grows wild out of walls around here. I don't have much luck with lupins and foxgloves after year one but the soul is great and the garden is sheltered so we can grow quite a lot

Don't be fooled by dwarf Buddlea. It might be for the first year but it certainly isn't after that

Oh no!
I hope mine (Buddleja Buzz 'hot raspberry') stays small.

I have it in a window box with pink Erodium and common Daisies....

Fucksandflowers The window box should contain it. I made the mistake of putting this one in the ground. First year small and neat. This year taller than me and this is after a prune in spring

Taller than you?!
😱
Maybe they mislabelled your Buddleja and it is a regular one instead of a dwarf?

My mum has a beautiful weigela mislabelled as a gooseberry and Morrisons have a number of mislabelled roses in at the moment, the variety names are all highly scented but the actual roses have zero...

I think you might be right. It's rapidly turning into a beast