@WonkyWomble I have never found a seedling near my mahonia japonica, which are a primrose pale yellow. But can fully sympathise with anyone whose job it is ( paid or otherwise) to deal with the dead leaves when tidying underneath them. They are vicious! But the birds enjoy the berries and pruning here is always delayed by dunnocks and blackbirds nesting. A good shrub for safe nesting if shaped to be dense. I grew mahonia aquifolium as 'ground cover' in a previous garden but found it unattractive and useless for the purpose so removed it.
I'm with @Hostafan1 on salix flamingo and houttuynia chameleon ... so wrong on many levels. I wouldn't plant bergenias ..... ugly looking things with leaves that soon go tatty.
A "friend" gave me a sisyrinchium .... didn't like it and hoicked it out .... 5 years later I'm still losing the war on it's seedlings
Love astilbies ... got lots of them in damp corners. Nice foliage which keeps the weeds down, and lovely flowers (our bees like them too).
Bee x
Gardener and beekeeper in beautiful Scottish Borders
A single bee creates just one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime
I'm probably going against the grain here, but I'm loving my French marigolds. Although they seem to be deemed 'unfashionable', 'common' or just downright 'ugly', on a functional level, they're doing a great job in my garden this year. My occasional late night patrols find Cyrils all over them - leaving virtually everything else in the vicinity alone
Any plant can be good in the right place/situation.
I used to not like a lot more plants, but I’ve now come round to what raisingirl says. Mostly! There are still a few I absolutely loathe though:
Pieris - they are in literally every 2nd garden here, often untended and grown into a lump with other shrubs that probably looked fine when planted at 2” tall 20 years ago but are now just an indiscriminate blob that the owner ‘prunes’ into whatever random leggy shape it’s gone. Often near front doors/windows for added bonus of blocking out light.
Ceanothus - same reason as above.
Impatiens and Busy Lizzie- heaps of these grown (and other bedding) when I was a child and it was imprinted on me that loads of bedding was an unbreakable gardening rule. Consequently I never enjoyed gardening and it never worked out as my own garden really doesn’t have the conditions for elaborate bedding planting so it never did well.
re "bedding" My parents grew "bedding" 50 odd years ago and I still see folk growing the same crappy little plants in the same way. Would anyone wear the clothes , or decorate their homes in the same way folk did half a century ago? I think not. But we still see the whole alyssum lobelia salvia blaze of fire combo. Bizarre. Don't folk any any imagination but the grow the same stuff year after year? The joy of growing annuals is the ability to mix things up year on year.
Posts
But the birds enjoy the berries and pruning here is always delayed by dunnocks and blackbirds nesting. A good shrub for safe nesting if shaped to be dense.
I grew mahonia aquifolium as 'ground cover' in a previous garden but found it unattractive and useless for the purpose so removed it.
I wouldn't plant bergenias ..... ugly looking things with leaves that soon go tatty.
A "friend" gave me a sisyrinchium .... didn't like it and hoicked it out .... 5 years later I'm still losing the war on it's seedlings
Love astilbies ... got lots of them in damp corners. Nice foliage which keeps the weeds down, and lovely flowers (our bees like them too).
Bee x
A single bee creates just one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime
Pieris - they are in literally every 2nd garden here, often untended and grown into a lump with other shrubs that probably looked fine when planted at 2” tall 20 years ago but are now just an indiscriminate blob that the owner ‘prunes’ into whatever random leggy shape it’s gone. Often near front doors/windows for added bonus of blocking out light.
Ceanothus - same reason as above.
Impatiens and Busy Lizzie- heaps of these grown (and other bedding) when I was a child and it was imprinted on me that loads of bedding was an unbreakable gardening rule. Consequently I never enjoyed gardening and it never worked out as my own garden really doesn’t have the conditions for elaborate bedding planting so it never did well.
My parents grew "bedding" 50 odd years ago and I still see folk growing the same crappy little plants in the same way.
Would anyone wear the clothes , or decorate their homes in the same way folk did half a century ago? I think not. But we still see the whole alyssum lobelia salvia blaze of fire combo. Bizarre.
Don't folk any any imagination but the grow the same stuff year after year? The joy of growing annuals is the ability to mix things up year on year.
I still like prawn cocktail, and cheese and pineapple even though they are deeply unfashionable