Talkback: Spring flowers - my least favourites

Posts

• Gardeners' World Web User Posts: 17,147

  March 2008

  I enjoy James Alexander-Sinclairs' writing very much, and a great sense of humour too.

  0
• Gardeners' World Web User Posts: 17,147

  March 2008

  Horah to ridding the world of forsythias!!! I have just massacred mine and thank goodness i did. Hideous ugly plant.

  0
• Gardeners' World Web User Posts: 17,147

  March 2008

  Dear James, I love your turn of phrase (and actually enjoy being 'mugged by a sunbeam!) I even like forsythia's knobbly bark. Have to agree about the flowering currant, but haven't yet met anyone who likes - or even notices - the smell of Hypericum Hidcote foliage. I think it's lovely!

  0
• Gardeners' World Web User Posts: 17,147

  March 2008

  I LOVE daffodils but prefer the tete ta tete variety, love 'grape hyacynths'...yellow and blue together is the best sight of spring each year. However, I have to agree with the comments about forsythia and ribes.....but then again, any colour that marks the emergence of Spring....bring it on!!

  0
• Gardeners' World Web User Posts: 17,147

  March 2008

  It always amuses me that some people are so offended by the sight of Forsythia in bloom! Come on folks- live and let live! I welcome their contribution and am always "cheered" by their appearance along our urban streets. They seem to bloom in defiance,boldly stating their right to exist.To me they are one of the reminders, after a dark winter,that Spring is on its way and there are better things to come!

  0
• Gardeners' World Web User Posts: 17,147

  March 2008

  My neighbours' forsythia is almost as tall as my bedroom windowsill, but it does give us some privacy from one another! I think when something has become so popular that it is seen so commonly in so many gardens we can become over-whelmed by it's appearance and start to hate it!

  
  Another plant that has fallen out of popularity or fashion is the pampas grass, for bizaar and ridiculous reasons, ranging from "chav-ness" to apparently being representative of the home-owners association with a rather sleezy club pastime!!!

  What a load of rot!!! I have just bought myself a lovely pink fluffy pampass --- can you get more chavvy than that??? And wall-flowers were considered, not so long ago, as a really "old-lady-ish" plant, and quite naff! I have planted a whole gaggle of these in red and white either side of our school chapel doorway, and they look really green and lush. When the flowers come, I hope everyone will feel uplifted rather than "old-ladyish"!!!!

  0
• Gardeners' World Web User Posts: 17,147

  April 2008

  We get hours of amusement watching local sparrows tugging at the fluffy remains of our neighbour's pampas grass, sometimes falling off backwards in their efforts to get a bit more nesting material. No, I don't like those grasses either, but they seem to be very useful to the birds.

  0
• Gardeners' World Web User Posts: 17,147

  April 2008

  After recently moving to a new property with a run down garden which was full of forsythias I can sympathise with James.They have become so common they are almost like a weed.I did keep one as I felt so guilty tearing up perfectly healthy plants.They are a rather dull plant I agree, though they are a plant and as all keen gardener will agree they have there own unique beauty and I suppose they have their place .

  0
• Gardeners' World Web User Posts: 17,147

  March 2009

  Excellent site blog.gardenersworld.com and I am really pleased to see you have what I am actually looking for here: this .. as it's taken me literally 2 hours and 44 minutes of searching the web to find you (just kidding!) so I shall be pleased to become a regular visitor

  0
• Gardeners' World Web User Posts: 17,147

  April 2009

  Hello ! It's been a crazy week but we got back to classes today and all went well with our return
  http://www.veazeys.com/archives/000023.html , yupiii.

  0