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.

That happened to my Thalia too, i have dug them up and spaced them out, fingers crossed.
I don't think I've explained myself well. I'm not meaning to be judgemental and yellow is not absent from my garden, especially my annual butterfly and bee patch where anything goes its just that when i think of out of fashion plants most of them are yellow or orange, (not that all yellow sr orange are out of fashion). I was brought up in a new town where most of the municipal planting seemed to consist of badly pruned berberis, mahonia and potentilla, i think it put me off, also the acid yellow Welsh poppies I've spent years trying to get rid of that keep popping up and spoiling my colour scheme!
Old fashioned is different from out of fashion, which is why cottage gardens are never completely out.
I dare say new perennial style plantings will be out soon, i feel purple alliums have peaked now.
I did once design a garden for someone whose favourite colour was orange and it worked out well, it was a favoured sunny spot though so i got to use lots of perrenials that don't like my shadier plot (i have a large Copper beech at the bottom of my garden) like heleniums. Still didn't use any acid yellow though!

Oh, I love the clear fresh yellow of Welsh poppies. I encourage them to brighten all the shady corners (of which I have many )

We had lots of honesty in our last garden...do wish I'd dug up a little and brought it with me when we sold that house!

In fact, like a previous poster's, that garden was a proper old style cottage one that one couple had developed over decades. Sadly the guy who bought the house from them - his ex GF was their daughter and apparently that's why he purchased 🙄 - let it go a bit so it was very overgrown by the time we bought the house in 2014.

Loads of stuff survived beneath the undergrowth though - several massive fuchsia, chaenomeles, snapdragons, lots of buddleia, acanthus, ribes, huge mounds of conifers, masses of roses, swathes of peonies round the pond, honesty, a large laburnum and a 70' wisteria.

We're creating a large cottage garden at our new, more rural home and trying to make it a mix of old and new. Really miss that wisteria too 🙁

I think chrysanthemums are about to have a revival and wouldn’t be surprised to see some at Chelsea next month. Another year or two and I think we will see carnations and pinks reappear.

Everything in the Ladybird Rapunzel garden

Welsh poppies - yellow and orange are great and will grow in gravelly and paved rough areas.
I collect seed now and have seeds from poppies, red campion (wild flower - you only need say one plants' worth of flowerheads to get hundreds of seeds, - ragged robin, which I can throw on road verges, in the garden, on waste ground near where I live. Effortless colour.

We have masses of Rozanne geraniums and lavender so the spikes of crocosmia stop the beds looking too blue.

@MereDintofPandiculation

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.

We have a huge patch of orange crocosmia. It has Japanese anemone growing amongst it.

Pelargoniums as a bedding plant, particularly plain bright red ones. Big bed of yellow loosestrife. Lots of HT roses, and floribundas. A “polyanthus bed”. These are all features of my mother’s garden that I don’t think you’d see nowadays

That's true Mere what about the soldier like rows of Busy Lizzies that the parks used to stick in every year? Hopefully not any more.

We misguidedly employed an elderly 'gardener' fellow who did that in our garden in the 90s!! I think he thought I was mad to suggest NO straight rows and only white!!!

I have poppies (the shaggy pink ones) where I have done some a bit of planting or replanting ( I try to use the no dig method). But they need sun I wish I could get something colourful to grow in my shady areas . I NEED your yellow ones!

I was in Eastbourne last week and they had formal bedding in rectangular beds along the seafront. Proper old style carpet bedding with intricate raised patterns made from succulents, surrounded by densely planted brightly coloured pelargoniums, busy lizzies and the like. It looked glorious! And quaint. I was amazed a local authority still has the money and inclination to do this; you just don’t see it any more. Along a traditional seaside prom like that it looked marvellous and utterly in keeping.

I regret not taking a photo, but it was pouring with rain - which actually made the cheery colours all the more startling and welcome.

The Eastbourne council must be wealthy to afford the gardeners ! Venus maybe they have some old boys on it who do it for the love of it!

Here ( MW Fr.) the municipal planting is quite up to date with gaura, salvia coccinea, recyled pots, loads of mulch and that lovely large feathery lavendery plant (I've forgotten the name).

The Eastbourne council must be wealthy to afford the gardeners They may be investing heavily in volunteers. Where I am, the Council mow the grass, but the rest of the maintenance seems to be volunteers.

I suspect the carpet bedding at Eastbourne may be the work of volunteers or be sponsored. There’s similar in Worthing and where was it that was shown on Gardeners’ World? Was it Deal (although there, the volunteers were planting more diverse plants, not just bedding)?

Volunteers do all our "municipal" planting now, our village looks lovely but unfortunately the less resource rich villages nearby look a bit neglected and drab, it's a shame.
Welsh poppies would take over my garden (and pop up right in the middle of clumps of other plants) if i let them as its cool and damp, the upside is that their lovelier relatives Himalayan poppies grow really well for me.

We have a lovely crocosmia in our building's front garden that I took a photo of yesterday so I can try and Paint it. Try being the operative words.

It is quite a yellow one. The hummingbirds love it.

Himalayan poppies are only lovelier if you like blue rather than yellow. Welsh poppies still have the large flowers, the delicacy of the petals. We undervalue them because they arrive unasked.

(I could try an argument in favour of bindweed compared to its relative Ipomea, but I don’t think I’d get anywhere)

Lovefall Are you somewhere exotic with real hummingbirds or are they hummingbird moths?

Mere I'd be with you about the cute smaller pinky white version of bindweed we have here. The larger not so much . I have tried and failed miserably with ipomea which is so beautiful. I'm a real fan of blue flowers (fashionable or not!) I have hyssop and campanula. Or also self seeded salvia guaranitica a real gift!! But it only flowers occasionally.

I have tried to love conifers, and bergenia, and begonias, and I just can’t. But I came round to Dahlias. But the thing I will never come to love is brown earth between neatly spaced plants (MIL, I’m looking at you…).,

Purple We have conifers (one of which is a real beauty, a cedar or a specifically special one) They were here when we moved and are bit overwhelming esp. the common ones which are leylandii of course!!. But we love them now, we have a big garden and they help, with their shade and chemical magic, to keep down the rampant growth here! Being a 'wilder' I need that!

I of course I hate that NO WEED WHATEVER policy that is sooo old fashioned now. ( a lot of the french gardeners are basically scorched earthers too ) Does your MIL mulch? If she did it would keep the weeds down without all the weeding,spraying etc. that must take an age to do anyway.

Seeing conifers in a beautiful winter garden frosted - with seedheads of perennials and grasses and cornus is stunning.

Most of us don't have gardens big enough to do that in.

And a random christmas tree stuck in a garden that someone has planted on a whim- usually not quite the same.

We have a neighbour's leylandii looming over our back garden - they have been cut back, badly, to about 12 foot - but are horrendous things.

they won't take them out - partly cost - partly they like the privacy they get from it.

It nearly put me off buying the house...but the garden is still sunny and they are at right angles to our hedge.

ppeatfruit - I'm not sure what your small bindweed is - here we have Field bindweed (Convolvulus arvenis) as well as the big white hedge bindweed (which can be either of two species of Calystegia), and it is a lovely thing, with a delightful fragrance, one of my childhood memories. The soils where I am now are too heavy for it, so I hardly ever see it.

We also have a variant of the Calystegia which has pink and white striped flowers.

I look after a local nature reserve, and one of our volunteers asked me "what's that wonderful flower down the other end? Big white bells?" and it took me a few minutes to realise he meant the bindweed, which covers a large area and actually looks stunning. Along with couch grass, which I'm sure would be a garden favourite if it weren't a) native and b) invasive.

I adore Welsh poppies, and I have plenty after swiping a seed head from a drive way as I was passing. I scattered them everywhere, and they have popped up everywhere. Mostly yellow, but some orange too. Very easy to pull up if they are in the wrong place.

Also, what a lovely thread this is, thanks for starting it, OP.

I cannot imagine couch grass every being a garden favourite!

I do worry, as I have a small garden, about unintentionally planting a thug that will take over.

I've just order some Bears Britches...but they'll be held back by a retaining wall!