garden trends you wouldn't want in your own garden?

[DaringAquaViewer]

a fruit plant

There's a lot of judgy pants on this thread. Have only very recently got into gardening - as our garden needed a bit of attention but I do find the levels of judgyness coupled with snobbishness to be quite overwhelming and unpleasant at times. The wilderness crew are the worst - always keen on a bit of virtue signalling, and always ready to tell you that you are doing it wrong cause the bees...

Just checked out one of the Facebook shower curtain groups, omf they are hideous. And mostly combined with fake grass, people suggesting adding fake plants. I'm so used to my wildlife gardening groups I didn't realise the other end of the scale.

Gardening is probably one of the most snobby hobbies there is! It’s kind of what makes it fun and what keeps it ticking over. It has fashions just like anything else.
and you can’t help but either like or hate stuff.
currently I like grasses , purple flowers, olive trees but these might be v naff in 3 years time and well tended lawns, neatly clipped roses and chrysanthemums might be all the rage!
watch Chelsea flower show for latest “in” plants and copy or just do opposite.
mind you a couple of years ago they were pushing drought resistance plants and gravel gardens. It hasn’t really stopped raining since 😁

Fake grass, those coloured metal fences, overgrown weedy gardens, rattan (or fake) furniture. Had never heard of the shower curtains but those are quite, quite hideous

I’m working class and a complete gardening novice, having always lived in rentals where outside maintenance was part of the tenancy agreement, or flats with no outside space. Bought a house with a huge, overgrown building site in 2020, but only just starting to reclaim it from being a building site. I know nothing, but aim at making this piece of ground a pleasant and private place to inhabit, and a hood place for nature. But I’m still allowed to have a pathological hatred of cordylines and plastic topiary balls.

My neighbours like to go on about hating the new trends and being all about "the wildlife".
We had a garden designer visit and they wanted to look at our hedge from the neighbour's side - the garden designer was very amused because she said the neighbour's garden wasn't great for wildlife and they were all greenwashing talk.

We just had a large leylandi hedge removed, along with some pampas grass, and my garden feels about 3x bigger.

currently redoing our very overgrown garden and trying to thread the needle between good taste and everything that my children get excited for (ornaments! Wind chimes! All the bright colours at once!)

I don't understand the hatred for fake rattan. I am the only one in our house who likes sitting outside, and DH hates eating outside so we just have the wrought iron table that the previous owner left behind with some cheap plastic chairs that you see everywhere.

I don't follow garden trends. I just plant anything that will grow well in our garden.

Unfortunately, we have a hideous "prison fence" at the end of our garden that Network Rail installed as we back on to a railway line.

We have a trellis in front of it with climbing plants, but they need to fill out a bit more.

just remembered something else I hate - Bamboo! That is the devils plant and I don't care how much of an excellent "screen" it might make. It's ugly, anti social and has no wildlife benefit I can see at all.

Bamboo is excellent for wildlife, in the right place. That place being regions with wild pandas.

People who dislike roses for doing nothing for much of the year just haven't found the right rose. We have a gorgeous noisette that is smothered in pink blooms all year round.

Odd my inherited from the previous owners 3 rose bushes bloom any time from May until January with a stoppage for July and August when it's really hot.

Bees, hoverflies, wasps and other pollenators are easy.

They like any flowering plant that doesn't have a double flower and isn't long so they can get to the pollen.

Just plant a section of flowering plants that flower for a many months as the year as possible as something will like it.

Stunned anyone would think those curtains could trick the eye, even without my glasses on I’d not think those were real. You’d need to be mr magoo.

Re roses - yes for sure some of the older (though not proper 'old') varieties aren't good but David Austin and his successors have made them long season beauties.
Growing the roses of the 50s and 60s is a trend long consigned to history I'd have thought!

Our last house had 30 6 ft roses in the front garden - evil bloody things to get around with lawnmower- we broke 3 forks before finally buying a pick axe, good riddance to that painful trend.

Plastic shit
Grey shit
Outdoor living space
People who use the term outdoor living space
Straight lines
Manicured hedges
Barking dogs
Furniture
Plastic furniture
Plastic people
Plastic grey loving people who drink prosecco in their outdoor living space with their barking flat faced inbred dogs

I have gravel in my own garden that I don't like. The thought of removing it is painful since it is a lot of work. I don't know what to replace it with.

I hate entire fences painted in Curpinol Seagrass. I love love love the colour, in fact I used it to paint my mini greenhouse, but people round my way keep doing their whole fences in it and I just think it's too much?

Our fences need painting and I'm desperate to do them black, I think my flowers will look amazing against black fences.

I dislike fake grass and garden ornaments!

Decking
’Arcitectural’ plants. Those red or black palm type things.

I love ponds though. Had one in my last house. Could hear the froggies croaking from March onwards.

It should have a membrane under it I would think. Depends how long it's been there. Check and if so, then under the membrane you could have soil

Thanks for sharing this, how weird that so few seem to be legit views for an English garden to even try to be remotely realistic.

You can't have seen the right roses to think this. There are roses that flower from June to October which is much longer than many other shrubs. Pruning isn't difficult either.Take a visit to an open garden or stately home known for roses and you'll change your mind. Or visit David Austin's rose gardens at their nursery, you'll be blown away.

I also used to dislike roses as I inherited some old leggy ones in this house and they bloomed for like a week and just looked shit the rest of the time with thorns that were beyond dangerous.

however I now have four David Austin climbers on fences and they are lovely, bloom heavily and constantly from late spring to early autumn, the fences are heaving with them in summer, and I’m now a huge convert .

What? What do you mean you don’t like furniture , do you just sit on the ground?

I have fake grass, paving, fake rattan furniture (including a sofa), a tinkly water feature and outdoor string lights... I'm a peasant 👋
We'll be watching the Eurovision next month on our projector screen in the back garden, with our neighbours, and serving drinks from the optics in our "shed" (haven't thought of a name for the "shed" yet. Must get onto that) The fire pit will probably be lit when it gets a bit chilly and the gas BBQ will be fired up.

Love my garden, or "second living room in the Summer".

Having spent 5 years trying to turn the 10ft x 10ft patch of moss into grass which then got eaten 3 years on the trot by daddy long legs larvae, I am at peace with my decision.

I hate rose bushes, dahlias, Chrysanthemums, those little bright coloured bedding plants that people put in a line along the front of their borders, borders down each side of the fence with "decorative edging" mirrors, wind chimes/ornaments, decking, pink/blue/green/purple fences.
Each to their own though eh. What ever makes you happy.

I do however have a lovely allotment over the road which will be full of lovely flowers for the bugs and bees. Lots of slugs, worms and snails. The odd mouse, birds and hedgehogs.

One day I'll have a lovely garden with meandering paths, trees, a veg patch and a wild flower meadow alongside my stream.