What do you regret planting in your garden?

[MyRabbit79]

Inspired by the current thread about the plants and weeds people are currently battling, what are the plants you've purposely sown or planted in your garden and come to regret?

For me, it's aquilegia and forget-me-nots.

I bought some aquilegia for our front garden when we moved here and it pops up everywhere, looks messy and I don't love the flowers

Forget-me-not - I sowed these from seed two years ago out the front. They're now everywhere including in the pots, gravel and back garden. Planning to pull most of it up after it's flowered this year.

It really is. I try never, ever to use it but I’m seriously considering attacking with RoundUp. Have you ever tried?

Unless your garden is routinely invaded by vampires, I think that's very wise!

Talking about plants that will not die, laurel is the definite winner. The previous owners planted a massively long laurel hedge that they then ignored. It was huge and hideous so we cut it down. The stumps have been treated with everything you can imagine - we couldn’t afford a stump grinder- from stump killer, to copper nails, to having individual coal fires kept burning over them for a full day and some of them still sprouted back.
I couldn’t believe it when new neighbours on the other side moved in a couple of years ago and then planted one themselves!

We didn't plant it but I regret not digging it out when we moved in 10 plus years ago - a bloody enormous palm tree slap bang in the front lawn. I think it is a canary island date palm. I would feel bad cutting it down but I just can't love it.

Hah! We have Virginia creeper too and I fear it. It grows all over our boundary wall and every summer it tries to mountaineer over the adjacent shrubs to begin the march across the lawn. Convinced it is planning an assault on the house so I hack it back but it’s making yearly progress.

Yep - it doesn’t seem to touch it… :-(

But ground elder his white flowers, not pink. Or did you plant a garden variety?

A viburnum which has done nothing for three years except grow ever more giant upright stems. In theory it will flower someday. Maybe it will be worth it. Which Viburnum and when do you prune it? A friend was getting no flowers on her V bodnantense because she was pruning the flowering stems out every autumn.

A holly tree. Ugly thing that doesn't even produce berries in the winter. Hollies have male and female flowers on separate plants. You need a female for berries, and a male nearby to pollinate it. So either you have a female and no near males, or you have a male

Euphorbia - like so many planting as a cheap filler and for colour in winter except now I'm constantly pulling it out Not all Euphorbias are invasive! E. robbiae and E. cyparissias I think are the worst, but if you’re on clay I guarantee you won’t have trouble from E. myrsinites!

@MereDintofPandiculation · Today 10:15
Softoprider · Yesterday 14:40

Yes that's it ! Ground Elder. There is a short time frame when it actually looks good and people ask me what it is ( I know now) but when it has flowered it becomes rampant.
I had a feeling it had to be dug out @Beebumble2 Thanks !
But ground elder his white flowers, not pink. Or did you plant a garden variety?

I have been in this house for 14 years and have no recollection of ever having planted it - whatever it is !

Apparently there is a pink form of ground Elder. I’ve googled and taken a photo of the page. Hopefully it will add.

@minipie prune Viburnam Bodnantense now it will flower on new wood produced this year. Have variety Charles Lamont which is pruned down to 18" after flowering has lots of flowers on the new wood before leaves appear.

Surely no one ever deliberately plants any type of ground elder?!

The small eucalyptus 'bush' that's now 10 feet tall and a misshapen nightmare in totally the wrong place in the garden

Bowles golden grass, self seeds in the middle of clumps of other perennials!
Also Michaelmas daisy's

I planted this in my last garden. Big mistake. HUGE! I now have some in a pot and that's where they will stay.

I love crocosmia! I wish mine would spread just a little bit. I put some in a couple of years ago hoping it would fill up a corner and it just stays exactly the same. Not sure what variety I have.

Crocosmia is everywhere in my garden. 5 or 6 corms worth look really pretty in the border , but mine ends up as giant clumps of peanut brittle with very few flowers . Seems to happen overnight The leaves have the most ugly death phase of any plant..Also Rats tail sedge. 8 ft of pure malice. The only good thing is that the seedlings are recognisable. I hate it so much I have even forgotten myself and pulled up seedlings in other peoples gardens without asking. Can’t get on with geum because my garden is full of wood avens which looks exactly the same, so I think weed and pull them up. On the other hand, I love wild garlic, forgetmenots, nigella , honesty and cosmos. Can’t have enough of them. I have also lost countless clematis. The only 1 left is an Armandii which tries to eat a 30 ft border and an old apple tree every single year.

We had a 20ft+ one cut down last year, it grew as you looked at it! However, we’ve got loads of lovely wood for the stove.

Quite a few! I wanted a wildlife garden and bought lots of lovely native plants but didn't look up to check how invasive they can become! 😆Soapwort is the worst, sends runners out and appears everywhere! Red campion, woodruff, wood sorrel, yellow archangel, violets, aquilegia, etc have all spread more than i'd hoped too but they are pretty. Dogwood is a regret too, it sends out underground runners and pops up everywhere, as does blackthorn and buckthorn but they are good for wildlife so i can't get too mad at them :)

I got one dug out - loads of people have them here - and they grow huge, drop leaves everywhere and I'm really allergic to the pollen. But the bastard keeps popping up new shoots. I'm sitting there thinking 'did I plant that?' then realise it's another shoot. So if you do dig it up - go deep.

I replaced it with a mountain ash for the birds and a autumn flowering cherry and lots of perennials. So I don't feel guilty at all.

I am wondering if I'm going to regret planting a, according to SArah Raven, non thuggish white Acanthus....it's taking a while to get going but looks like it might not just be getting ideas above its station.

Also a newly installed silver birch, snow queen that I know will get too big and will have to come out in20 years....but I'm hoping will be lovely in the mean time.

Oh yes, I have also planted a silver birch in the wrong place too near the house. It is lovely and very happy but it will need to go at some stage (now 5 years in).

Spanish bluebells, they were here when we moved in (with nothing else in the border), they are are under 2 layers of membrane (yes another regret) and I pull up tonnes of the fuckers every year but they still come back rampantly!

This thread is making me regret spreading around some forget-me-nots as ground cover to fill on some of the gaps, hopefully it’ll be ok 😬

I regret my lupins as they just get munched by slugs and covered in aphids but I don’t have the heart to pull them up.

Also my ornamental cherry tree that DH got me for our “wood” anniversary as it’s never flowered and make me sad every time I look at it.

Pulmonaria and yellow archangel- they're rampant in our clay soil, woodland garden. Both out-compete everything, even the ground elder and are now spreading like triffids into the more formal, sunny parts of the garden.

This is my kind of thread. Because everything on here marked as a bully is going on my to buy list 😂

About 10 years ago my DF planted a small eucalyptus tree at the back of a long garden and about 4 m away from the neighbour's fence. The reason was that we have Australian relatives.

It's now huge and tall (although not wide) and we recently had to have it pruned as the neighbour was worried it would fall on their outbuilding.

Not an ideal tree for the situation