Biggest Gardening Disaster

[Trueloveneverdies]

I’ve always wanted a wedding cake tree. The year before last I found the perfect one. Beautifully spaced even branches and a lovely size. I bought a stupidly expensive huge terracotta pot to plant it in and was absolutely chuffed with it. I went on holiday for a week and my Mum watered it to death.

Every time I look at the pot I see the ghost of the wedding cake tree! Does anyone else have any gardening disasters?

My bugbear is clematis. My next door neighbour has a gorgeous one scrambling through her apple tree and it's just so lovely. I bought one, planted it and it died. So I bought another one, which also died. Bought another, different variety, guaranteed to be vigorous... you can guess, can't you?

I currently have one single clematis which, every year, grows to the height of about two feet, puts out one bud (which is pecked off by birds) and then dies back to nothing. Why can't I grow clematis? I do everything right, I promise...

I feel your pain. I used to walk around garden centres thinking oooh I like that. Now my internal monologue says you’ve killed that already, keep walking!

Two summers ago I knew cancer treatment was going to sap any gardening energy I had so we scattered a wildflower seed mix on the beds.

It turned out to be 90% borage which is ugly (in my opinion) and an absolute thug. Husband has spent hours digging it out before it seeds everywhere. We will be doing this for years to come, probably.

A Jasmine which I planted to grow over an arbour. Turned out to be an absolute thug, took over the whole thing, rooted itself under flagstones and came up elsewhere, swamped a lovely climbing rose and had about 3 flowers a year. I finally dug it up this year after twenty years of battling with it. It took me about 15 hours.

I had a beautiful, massive, mature clematis which I cut back at completely the wrong time last autumn assuming it was so hardly that it would be fine.
This year it has about 3 pathetic shoots. I'm hoping that it will restore itself to its former glory eventually, but it definitely won't be this year.

Loads of disasters! But if you plant enough things you do end up with something. My first year growing pumpkins, I read that you should pick off fruits once it has 3. But I didn't know the difference between pollinated amd unpollinated, so ended up with just one fruit to eat. My most expensive plant is one I asked for on a big birthday, as I couldn't justify the cost if I bought it and killed it in months. Luckily it is still there a few years later.

I am the opposite - I planted half my lawn with wildflower mix and apart from a bit of clover, not one 'wildflower' has even bothered to come up. I'd even enjoy some borage at this stage...

I hope your health has made a full recovery.

More importantly, how are you doing now?

I think I need nickname myself,Borage!!

Wisteria. One particular wisteria. My mother planted it outside their front door, and it spent years annoying my father by growing over the porch and climbing into a nearby tree and pulling up patio stones and leaving petals everywhere. About a week month after my DM died, it's had the cutting back of its life, and shortly after that it's in a bucket in the back of his car and he's digging a hole in my garden for it. Where it sat, doing absolutely fuck all for about 5 years. My father, however, is constantly digging more and more bits up from next to his porch as roots shoot up, he started planting them in his back garden and then he's got a whole archway of wisteria flowering for ages just from the off shoots of the bits he didn't manage to dig up and give me. After ~5 years my bit of the wisteria has accepted its fate and makes a token effort to grow and spread a bit. It's had every treatment and feed known to mankind, it's been cut back only in RHS approved manner and timings - it's been nursed.... and the fucker has still never flowered. Twelve years, and not a single bud.

I planted approx 20 bulbs and only one grew. It’s very pretty but not the look I was aiming for 🙄

Years ago my mum was weeding the rockery around their pond and found a healthy little shoot struggling to thrive between two stones. She potted it up and waited to see what it was. It grew, seemed really healthy, and although she still wasn't sure what it was she planted it out in a fit of giddy overexcitement at finally managing to keep a plant alive 😁

Ground elder. 50 years on and they're still battling to keep it under control.

Never ever plant Dwarf Bamboo. Just don't.

Oh so many, but just about to give notice on my allotment that has 2 beautiful plum trees on it...after 10 years they are fruiting beautifully but I can't cope with the work on the allotment any more....

Snowdrops. Have spent a fortune on the little gits. In the green and bulbs. I had one bloom. Once.

This reminded me that I once bought about £50 worth of caldium bulbs and planted them outside on a mild autumn day. Waited, nothing happened in spring or summer. Did a bit of googling and realised caladium are mainly indoor house plants. I can laugh about it now.

So, so many. Can't grow camellias no matter how many times I try and despite the fact my neifghbours all have huge thriving camellias in their gardens so the soil should be fin.

Dahlias. Spent a fortune on stupid bloody things and got ONE flower.

Plant another cornus, OP. They are lovely.

So many, but chiefly clematis. I had a magnificent clematis montana but had to sacrifice it for the sake of a new fence. Its replacement (in a different position) has never been so good. The purpurea plena elegans growing through a jasmine was also magnificent, until it died, and its replacement is still, after about six years, a feeble thing.

Hope you are well now, FriendlyGreenAlien.

Crocuses. Planted loads in a raised bed. I get two white flowers every year. Lots of leaves but only two flowers.

I'm incapable of growing anything from seed. I get loads of seedlings, pinch them out and do everything to make them hardy. Then they just die. I never get them big enough to plant out. Tried so many times.

My quickest fail was a load of fancy daffodils bulbs. Planted them by the garage door so that I'd see them every time I came home from work. Went inside for a cup of tea. Came out after 20 minutes and the chipmunks had dug them all up. Never saw a single one.

I planted some tete-a-tetes this year, half in a pot on the patio and half in the garden. The ones in the pot are all out there nodding away with their flowery little heads. The ones I planted in the lawn are half an inch tall, brown, withered and nibbled. I've no idea what's eaten them but hope it never find the pot!

I planted houttuynia (chameleon) and whilst it is gorgeous it has spread everywhere and I didn't realise it would do that. I'm slowly digging out patches of it out as I don't want it to take over. Wish I'd kept it in a pot.

Not our mistake but previous owners of my house planted bamboo. We pulled it out shortly after moving it but it was a struggle to get rid of and took ages. It kept popping up in random places.

Not exactly a disaster, but definitely a mistake to sow red campion and herb Robert. Shy delicate woodland flowers, thugs in the garden. A Labrador Violet on the rockery similarly excessive, we ended up taking nearly everything out and starting again.

Eurgh herb robert is my nemesis!! It’s all in my shingle and a pain every year to get rid of!

No Fuchsia survives where we live! Not one out of the many different varieties! It's very odd!