Plants You Regret?

[Steve Rozmiarek]

We moved in with a pretty grape vine on a nice arbor. That thing is a beast, amazing how much it spreads. Previous owner admitted that it had taken over the entire back yard at one point, it's trying to again.

[John K Jordan]

Life lesson: always plant mint in pots.

[Doug Dawson]

Torpedo grass (panicum repens). I didn't plant it, it came with the house, and the only way to rid yourself of it is to move (which I did.) It will take over your entire lawn and gardens, and there is no known means of control. Epidemic in parts of the South (where I live.) Only a complete idiot would plant it, and, apparently, many do.

[Doug Dawson]

Ipomoea alba, sometimes called the tropical white morning-glory or moonflower...Incredibly prolific and once it goes to seed - volunteers show up for years to come. (Although it does make nice big flowers. I scanned one...first pic on my website)

Moonflower is a lovely plant, it attracts these great herculean moths at night. It's also a horrible whitefly magnet, I would never plant it again. I found that the primary means of control is to withhold watering, and a pre-emergent.

Passionflower (another ipomoea species) is greatly more invasive, spreading by underground rhizomes as much as twenty feet per season in good soil. Never plant that one in the ground, always in pots. Only spreads by seed if you see the seed pods, which are uncommon in nursery-sold plants.

[John K Jordan]

Passionflower (another ipomoea species) is greatly more invasive, spreading by underground rhizomes as much as twenty feet per season in good soil. Never plant that one in the ground, always in pots. Only spreads by seed if you see the seed pods, which are uncommon in nursery-sold plants.

Maybe the non-nursery passion flower plants are different. There are several growing here "wild" for years that have not spread, but maybe the soil where they are is not that good, I don't know. I see the seed pods on them every year.

JKJ

[Brady Watson]

Did anyone mention bamboo?

[John K Jordan]

Did anyone mention bamboo?

Bamboo is fantastic if you have the right location and space. A good friend has had a patch down a steep hill by a spring for many 40 years now and it stays right near the water. It's a wonderful place to walk through and just experience. He cuts uses it around his house and studio. I know of another patch on an island out in the middle of a river here - that seems to constrain it's spread.

I wouldn't want it near the house or garden though...

JKJ

[Scott Donley]

English Ivy, I swear the devil gave it to mankind.

[Doug Dawson]

Did anyone mention bamboo?

There are clumping bamboos and non-clumping bamboos. The former are delightful, and muy expensivo. The latter are the scourge of entire neighborhoods, but people will let you cut them down for free, and they make great garden trellises.

[Doug Dawson]

Maybe the non-nursery passion flower plants are different. There are several growing here "wild" for years that have not spread, but maybe the soil where they are is not that good, I don't know. I see the seed pods on them every year.

The nurseries don't need seeds, they find a plant they like and propagate it from cuttings. We're in zone 8b/9, Knoxville is 7a, and the plant is cold-sensitive, that probably affects the spread.

[Allan Dozier]

Morning Glory. It dies back in the winter but the seeds sprout up all over the garden.

[Lee DeRaud]

Nandina, AKA "Heavenly Bamboo": not really a bamboo, but it has all of the nastier aspects of real bamboo without any of the charm.

Mind you, I didn't plant it, but it's popular with the local landscape designers (may they all die a slow lingering death). There were a dozen or so planted around the house when I moved in, and close to 40 years later I'm still doing battle. I feel like I'm slowly gaining on a victory, but I have a suspicion that at least one or two of the more stubborn locations will outlive me.

[Kev Williams]

timely thread, as I was just telling the wife for the umphundreth time 'Vegetation Is EVIL!' -- Grass is growning already, and we're being overrun with English Ivy in the backyard...

And Trumpet vines. Got one on opposing corners of the house my mom planted years ago. I've chain sawed them to the ground, poured gas and diesel fuel on them, drilled holes in it and filled them with Roundup. And every spring they comes back, and I swear it grows more than a foot a day. Gets between the rain gutter and roof, gets thru the soffit and grows in the attic... within a week it'll grow from the corner of the house and engulf the water faucet 25' away, we have to cut it back every week. In the back yard it's growing up thru every expansion joint in the driveway and sidewalk, and last year it came up the other end of the lawn 50' away from the house.

-only thing worse maybe is a Chinese Elm tree. But nobody plants those, they just show up! I DID succeed in killing ONE Chinese Elm a couple years ago, but not these Trumpet vines...

And how about Quaken Aspens for this list... I moved into my previous house in 1982, the builder planted TWO quakies in the front yard. By the time we moved out in2006 the front yard was a jungle, and they were growing in every square foot of the property, you couldn't walk barefoot on our lawns, the quakies would poke holes in your feet. All the houses on our street had a 50' tall sand hillside in the back yard, my quakies were growing in the hills of neighbors 2 houses away on either side!
--funny thing, the 2 original quakies got sick a died at about 5 years old.

[Adam Herman]

Every house we have bought has had English ivy growing on the GD house. Why people let that happen is beyond my comprehension.

[BOB REESE]

My idea of fun lawn work is to pave it over and paint it green.