What's the plant you regret putting in?

[BarrelOfOtters]

betony Great for wildlife it said, good for dry places....didn't mention it spreads like buggery and it a pain to dig out..not impossible but spreads under ground. Completely unsuited for my small front border....

There's also a rather lovely ceonothus that is rather too big for the spot by the greenhouse door and is making encroachments ....

Oh yes bamboo, it took me weeks to dig it all out! I was warned it was invasive, but did I listen? 🤦🏽‍♀️

It grows in the wild here but no clay here.

Previous owner planted bluebells, its taken six years to stop the buggers coming up every now and then we find one trying again. Next door neighbour planted a passionflower, it spreads everywhere, new neighbour pulled it all out but the damm thing had already spread to our garden and it is wrapping itself around our shrubs and even coming up from beneath our decking, we keep pulling it out but it just won't take the hint

Interesting to read about gardens over-run with vinca and crocosmia - I can't get any joy out of either of these in my garden. The vinca is a pathetic stringy heap, and the crocosmia gives me about three weedy flowers a year.

I second what someone said upthread about peonies - I have one plant, which has been coming up for 15 years....I wait with excitement for it to flower, but I get maybe 4 fairly nondescript blooms out of it, and they are gone in the blink of an eye.

My gardening nemesis is probably those pale lilac perennial geraniums. Seemed like a good idea when I had no money and little time to plant clumps everywhere, but the bloody stuff takes over, flopping and collapsing all over the lawn and smothering everything around it. I don't even like the flowers that much.

And next door's laurel.....don't get me started.

Crocosmia grows everywhere in my clay soil, but flowers only in the sunny spots

@CCointreauVersial phew, I was starting to imagine I was the world's only person that thinks my peonies are an absolute waste of space in my garden. Not sure why I can't bring myself to pull the damn thing up... I always think next year it will be better!! 🤣 Also they are a horrible colour when they do flower!!

I’m jealous of all the encroaching Japanese anemones, I just can not grow it. I managed to half kill one I got in the bargain basement of the garden centre last autumn and while it has come back, it has about four leaves. Sodding thing, I regret it for that

The big thing I’ve regretting is buying “starter” plants. None of them took and I just ended up buying bigger ones later in the season.

I really hate the double ones, especially in deep magenta. My father had a tree peony (inherited with the house) which had huge pink double flowers the size of cabbages, like overgrown dish mops. Over a few years, I encouraged the shoots coming from the rootstock, and now it is a bush peony, with single flowers with an attractive ring of contrasting stamens. An immense improvement.

Well actually we didn't plant them, our next door neighbours did, they grow under the fence and ravage our flower bed...raspberries.

Ha, yes, peonies. I have planted two and so far have had one flower. One. Which fell off after two days in a heavy rain shower. I slightly wonder if it had been glued on in the garden centre 😆

Until this year, I'd only had three or four at the most flowers on my peony, I tried to dig it out last year but couldn't so gave up.

I wonder if that's what has made it go mad this year, I had about 20 heads on it.

I don't really like it but I've left it for now and see how it does next year.

I also did this with some lavender, couldn't get it out, left it in the border and masses of flowers this year.

Maybe that's the answer, try to get rid of it and it actually produces more flowers.

That’s an unconventional approach to gardening. I like it 😁

Crocosmia grows everywhere in my clay soil, but flowers only in the sunny spots
thank you @MereDintofPandiculation
mine has spread a little in the sunnier spots but the ratio of foliage to flower is not very cheering.
I wonder if it's too dry ?

A response to adverse conditions is, realising one's own life is limited, to flower like mad and produce as many seedlings as possible.

Examples - nasturtiums flower better in poor soil, figs fruit better if roots are restricted, I lost a Viburnum pilcatum to honey fungus - one year it flowered its socks off, the next year it was dead.

I do know peonies like to be planted deeply, and if the bulb (corm? root?) is too near the surface they don't flower as well. So I did heap up a bit more soil over mine last winter. Made not a jot of difference. 🙄

It’s the other way round - peonies like shallow planting. Here’s chapter and verse from the RHS.

Not in our garden but I seethe every time I see Sumac recommended as a tree for a small garden.Our neighbours inherited one close to our boundary and didn't realise ,nor did we, that pruning it back would send it into overdrive with multiple suckers appearing even metres away and incredibly remove.I had to dig out a huge border,remove and replant almost all my plants -losing a fair few -trying to eradicate roots.Much as I hate chemicals we had to resort to SBK weedkiller on the parent tree and any suckers and it was months before they finally stopped appearing. At least our neighbour co- operated.

@MereDintofPandiculation that's a pattern I've become too familiar with. There is honey fungus all through my garden, and now whenever anything flowers particularly well, I start thinking about what I'll plant when it pops its clogs the following year 😬

I opened this to say the same thing - the roots are now lifting our patio. Obviously it’s close to the house so in the next few weeks we have to get the patio up and dig the roots out before it gets any further and does serious damage.

It was the people previous to our current neighbours who planted them. Our boundary with them is short, just 5 fence panels long, and the old neighbour planted bamboo, a maple and a cherry tree right against the fence so there’ll come a point when the trunks push into it and not just damage the fence but cross the boundary.

Mine are approaching thug stage but I dig them up every few years, divide them, get rid of a lot and then replant. I like to think it helps keep them under control ...

They are in partial shade in my garden - sun in the afternoon. They definitely suffer during dry periods so perhaps yours were not getting enough water?

@GertrudeJekyllAndHyde you are absolutely right about peonies - I looked it up at the time, and ended up moving earth away from the base of the plant, rather than piling it up (I had forgotten what I actually did - durr!). But as I said, I needn't have bothered - it had no more flowers the following year. And they still lasted about ten minutes.

I took this approach with a Boston fern houseplant. Renowned as easy to grow but it bloody sulked and dropped leaves and tried to die, regardless of what I did.

I eventually lost patience one winter and lobbed it onto a table in the (then freezing cold) conservatory, at which point it perked up and decided it was happy after all. I call it my spite fern. If I pay it any kind of attention beyond the odd bit of water, then it tries to die just to spite me.

Watching this thread with interest as I have a tiny 30-40 cm wide patch of land around the house where I'd love to plant something blooming, wide-spreading and low maintenance. Unfortunately I have this rare talent to kill off succulents despite doing my best to care for them, following the instructions and everything 🙄
Maybe there's still some hope, even for me. If not hope, maybe vinca 🤔

If it gets the sun then lavender is pretty low maintenance. It might need an occasional light trim if it gets leggy but otherwise it can be left alone. Bees like it as well so that's a bonus.

@toucaninjapan
Hardy geraniums might be right for you. There's a hybrid called Rozanne. It flowers all summer and doesn't set seed so you won't get a garden full of horrible pink self-seeded horrors.