Plants that have gone out of fashion….and are due a revival

[BarkingUpTheWrongRoseBush]

Inspired by another thread about Kerri-a Japonica.

I also wonder about plants going out of fashion.

I love a lilac and remember them everywhere in my childhood …I’m planting a new dwarf one in my front garden. Also laburnum, they are everywhere but I don’t see new ones.

Aren't people funny about laburnum because it's so poisonous? I LOVE lilacs though....that smell!

Well yes, there is the whole deadly poison thing...but in the right place it's fabulously stunning. There's a road near me where almost every house has them and its stunning in spring.

Very candy pink flowering cherries were another thing - they seem more subtle these days.

I love lilacs too, OP. I have two full sized and one dwarf. And a giant kerria up the wall outside my kitchen window, that is smothered in cheery golden flowers in spring.
My garden would probably be considered very old fashioned - I have sweet williams, pinks, lilies of the valley, weigelia, spirea, foxgloves, bluebells, snowdrops, daffodils, lavender, catmint, snapdragons, fuchsia, forsythia, buddleia, mock orange….
I’ve always loved cottage style gardens and packed herbaceous beds, with daisy speckled lawns, rather than astroturf with a token bamboo planter!

I much prefer a cottage old fashioned garden too, I think many flowering shrubs are overlooked and so many herbaceous perennials bring back memories from childhood, I have a lovely white phlox that came from my grandads garden, he would be 114 now! I can a!so never have a garden without a hurdles that my grandma grew, I have memories of it being covered in butterflies.
The other big thing for me are roses, but the more upright HT and floribundas than the floppy David Austin roses, which although there can be some lovely ones, I often feel can be over rated.
I've just deliberately sown daisies and clover in my lawn too!

Hurdles??? That should be buddleia

I don't see Honesty any more- the one where the seed pods are flat and papery?

Reminds me of my nana's house from years ago

I have lots of Honesty, TheAwfulTruth! It enthusiastically seeds itself around my back garden like a weed, but I think it looks v pretty in autumn, so just thin it out a bit if it gets out of hand.

Cottage gardens are mainstream. Out of fashion would be immaculate beds with neatly spaced lobelia and other bedding plants, herbaceous borders which aren’t cottage gardens and which have no grasses, and HT and floribundas roses. Other memories are orange crocosmia rather than the modern varieties, and yellow loosestrife. Instead of sowing “bee friendly” or “wildflower” mixes, you gave your children “mixed hardy annuals” to sow.

@Babdoc

I have lots of Honesty, TheAwfulTruth! It enthusiastically seeds itself around my back garden like a weed, but I think it looks v pretty in autumn, so just thin it out a bit if it gets out of hand.

Gosh how lovely, not seen it in yonks!

We moved last year and inherited a fantastic old fashioned garden that had been created by a couple over a period of around 50 years. It's hard work as it was not maintained much for the last few years, but it makes me so happy when these old plants randomly pop up. It's very cottage garden. Hollyhocks, foxgloves, stink lilly, buddlias, mick orange, rambling roses, poppies, crocosmia, a 5' tall rosemary Bush, massive old apple tree and loads more. It reminds me of my parents' garden, which gives me the warm fuzzies.

People who visit, love it, even the ones with contemporary bare gardens. Most people just don't want the work now, which is fair enough, but many gardens are so boring.

I also vote for spider plants indoors. Mine is gorgeous.

TheAwfulTruth, when the DDs were kids, we used to pick the dry honesty and spray it with metallic paint for cheap Christmas decorations. I still have some 20 year old ones that I use each year to augment Christmas dried flower arrangements!

It always used to amaze me at Chelsea that you would often see the same obscure plant suddenly featured in lots of the show gardens , ( I well remember the chocolate scented cosmos riots of 1995 ) almost as though all the designers had got together and had a little chat. “Not lupins darling, they are so 2019, I ‘m getting a real vibe that says it’s going to be sedums or delphiniums in 2021.”

Conifers. Deeply unfashionable, but in the right place, a conifer allowed to take its natural form and grow to its full height is a thing of majestic beauty. I love to go to pinetums for winter walks, and the dc love touching the varied leaves - some spiky, some fluffy, often unexpected textures. All sizes and shapes, from squat and architectural to wafty and elegant. They disappear into the background in summer, but in winter where would we be without evergreens?

My favourites of all are the blue ones. There is a wonderful garden just outside Paris, Jardin Albert Kahn, which has an area called the Blue Forest, made up of blue pine trees. It’s absolutely magical. I totally recommend a visit if you’re in the area.

I have 3 spider plants on the go at the moment, I've always loved them. One of them flowered last week, so pretty.

Spider plants were the first plant I thought of.

French marigold 'Naughty Marietta' takes me right back to the late 1960's / early 70's when I used to help my dad dead-head the ones in our garden. Just thinking about it conjures up the smell of them.

I had huge pots of spider plants in my UK classroom. They came home for the summer, but that was about it. Fabulous plants; low maintenance and so showy.

In Melbourne they are an outdoor plant. A bloody scourge in the ground, I can tell you. Can't get rid of the buggers.I now have some in hanging baskets and poke around markets for different variegations. I have no compunction in pinching off a baby when passing a front garden.

And yes to French marigold, always a companion plant in my veggie patch.

Should also have mentioned lilacs. I miss them. They are very rare in Melbourne, too warm I would think. If I see one in a garden, I always pull over to have sniff.

Whenever I see tulips in a garden it strikes me as old-fashioned, but wonderful. I think because they are almost an archetypal flower, but I rarely see them growing as opposed to in a bouquet.

Did they used to be a more popular garden plant or am I remembering wrongly? Or perhaps it’s just my area where tulips are a rarity.

I always think of tulips as quite modern, in a garden setting. It's relatively recently that we've seen this trend of beds full of toning tulips with suitable underplanting. Previously tulip beds were a thing of public parks.

@VenusClapTrap the garden in Paris sounds amazing. They had a winter garden on GW a while back with conifers and corpus and grass. Magical.

@MereDintofPandiculation

I always think of tulips as quite modern, in a garden setting. It's relatively recently that we've seen this trend of beds full of toning tulips with suitable underplanting. Previously tulip beds were a thing of public parks.

Thanks for this - was genuinely curious about tulips. All this time I thought they had fallen from favour, despite the fact I couldn’t remember tulip-filled gardens in the past.

While we’re on the subject, can anyone recommend a good book about the history of gardening? I’m interested in ‘ordinary’ people’s gardens.

I've finally managed to get honesty growing, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it spreads. Yes to crocosmia, I have c Lucifer, it's looking great right now. The smell of a privet hedge takes me right back, where did privet go? I hardly ever see it now. Flowering currant is another really evocative, old fashioned plant due a comeback.

Crocosmia Lucifer is one those plants that blooms in winter in Victoria, as does the jasmine officinales. It's nice, to see and smell them in winter. I've no idea why they do this, while other plants are same, upside or no.

Privet grows as a small tree in Melbourne. Flowering currant reminds me of childhood, I can imagine the smell of the bruised leaves in my smell memory.

@Hollyhocksarenotmessy. That sounds like heaven
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My front garden is cottage garden style but I’m only one year in on completely blank canvas, it’s an old house bit there was just lawn before.

I’ve planted mock orange, rises, lavender, box, crocosmia lucifer, a viburnum, hydrangea, a Cornus variegata contra versa and a crab apple. I’d love a rose arch.

I love it when people stop and say I love your garden.