Hallson Gardens

Today I was once again dealing with an old nemesis around my yard that I suppose will inevitably outlive me, a plant called Jewels of Opar that I bought and planted over 20 years ago, and I wondered if anyone here had ever planted anything they later regretted?

The first time I saw "Jewels" it was love at first sight...exquisite tiny irridescent blooms on the most slender, fragile-looking stems...how unique, how fascinating.

The following year I knew I was in trouble, the uniqueness was long gone and fascination had turned into a nightmare...there were baby "Jewels" everywhere...all over the yard, in potted plants, in hanging baskets, even in my neighbors' yards and emerging from cracks in the sidewalk and splits in tree trunks - all from one little plant that I probably paid less than $2 for!!

I still remember the owner of the nursery where I've shopped for over 30 years telling me that "Jewels" was "demure". In retrospect, I now wonder if Foster knew the meaning of demure because this plant has been anything but modest or reserved - it has been prolific above and beyond any other plant I've ever grown and a nuisance beyond compare!

Ann

Japanese anemone --- I planted it, loved it the first year, ripped it out the second year, and about 4 years later still have it coming up.

Phygelius 'African Queen' --- gorgeous plant, gorgeous blooms, THUG of the century!!! Ditto what I said for the Japanese anemon. Still coming up after ripping it out last year.

Allium triquetrum - Gorgeous the first two years, loved those little white nodding blooms. Then the spread started, got larger every year, and now they are coming up everywhere, I have to get tweezers to pick new seedlings out from between hosta eyes and hellebore crowns, they literally are growing out from the bases of nearby plants. yuck....

Andi

Ann, could I persuade you to collect some seeds and send them to me? Perhaps Talinum is a thug for you, but in my more northerly garden it is charming. Alas, after several years it failed to return last year.

I shall never again plant the Rugosa rose. One plant was 10x10' after just a few years, and the rate of spread was increasing exponentially. It took two people all day, plus several follow-up blasts with RoundUp to get rid of it. Next target: moss rose.

Oh yea, that pink prinrose stuff.....(I think that's what it's called) it's pretty when it blooms, but then gets ugly and it spreads.....I have kept it pretty good in this one area, but I wish I had never planted it.....

Ditto on the pink evening primrose. That one not only spread but somehow sent seeds all over the place. When we left it was running rampant in between a couple shade houses, even though it had been repeatedly sprayed with roundup. The original planting was done by seed in 1993...

I may regret planting Campanula 'Cherry Bells', or should I say, whoever buys our old house may regret it Planted one plant 2 years ago and it has now reached out about 3 feet in every direction.

When we did landscaping I regretted planting Houttuynia - chameleon plant, those runners went out about 5 feet from fall to spring. Then wished I had never planted Centranthus ruber, red valerian, because the seeds spread down the path, down the sandstone stairs, around the pond, out in the lawn... That one took years to eradicate.

I was just considering the Chameleon Plant!!

Viktoria, it'll be much later this summer when my Jewels of Opar actually blooms but I'll gladly send you some seeds. I don't ordinarily ever grow anything from seeds, I'm too much into instant gratification, so you'll have to tell me the proper way to harvest them.

Obviously they're abundant...left to their own devices they'd probably make their way to your house on their own given enough time!!

At what stage do I try to gather seeds? I know after the blooms die that little dry seed pod forms but does it matter when you pick them off the plant?

I probably threw away 25-30 young plants yesterday but several are coming up in the gravel underneath the benches in my greenhouse and I can allow them to mature.

Ann

Minth , campagnula Pyramidalis (sp), I could have known that one.. if you get 1000 seeds for a few $ something have to be wrong, been fighting it for 5 years now, and one of my favorite plants have been a problem here too, tropeleum, in my former garden 25 miles away it was an anual, here it reseed and I have to pull it. It is hard to pull one of your favorite plants, but it ramble all over orher plantds and kill them in its way
Pia

Kalimeris Yomena Aureo - they said it was friendly but it behaved very well for three years - this year it has expanded in a 5' semi circle. The only reason it is a semi circle is I planted it in the corner of a raised bed.

Artemesia Oriental Limelight - this was new last fall. I found a couple of runners late in the season about a foot from the plant but it had plenty of space to expand. This year - ugh - it is every where in that section of the bed. My husband dug it out - yeah right - I still have it popping up 6' from the original spot.

Tomorrow I pull up a couple of pieces of each plant and they go into pots. Both of these plants have variegated foliage and they are gorgeous. If they escape the pots, then they will meet a fate worse than death - called Round Up. Each piece that pops up in the current location will have RU applied with a paint brush. I am probably going to have to dig out some rudbeckia and make sure I get those horrible white runners tomorrow also.

Friendly and invasive are two totally different terms to me.

jay dee

I made another booboo buying what I was told was a new, evergreen, non-aggressive wisteria and training it up two posts to the lattice arbor over my patio. For the first couple of years it was breathtakingly beautiful - lush foliage with almost irridescent wine-colored blooms. I never did anything other than prune errant stems, it just seemed to take care of itself.

Then, I'd say late last summer, the old wisteria took a growing spurt. I don't know what happened but that "non-aggressive" plant covered the patio arbor and started climbing the roof!! It was like being attacked by wisteria and to make matters worse, a pair of mourning doves built a nest in the wisteria and I couldn't really do any pruning until their little family moved on.

I had no idea how heavy the long stems and leaves were until I had to paintakingly cut it all back. What a job!

Ann

Grass! The invader of flower beds!

As for pink evening primrose --- I love it! I planted it on my flower mound and it took over. It was gorgeous. See my photo thread. The problem wasn't the primrose. It was the grass that kept creeping up the mound and in order to get rid of the grass, we had to pull up all the primroses, too. We couldn't separate the two. I'm also pulling up all my Bishop's weed so I can get rid of the grass that crept into it. I also had to sacrifice my beautiful dianthus plants because of the grass being intertwined with them.

One time I planted a lamb's ear that dropped seeds everywhere and kept coming up in the lawn. Now I have a different kind of lamb's ear and we don't have that problem.

I heard that some plants were introduced to our country and became weeds that people couldn't get rid of. Isn't the kudzu vine one of those?

I know Kudzu was a big problem in Ky. That darn stuff took over EVERYTHING!!
For me it was the Chamelon Plant. Sheesh.....It a pretty plant and I even asked people on here what they thought about it (after I bought it) and many said "GET RID OF IT!!" I thought to myself..."surely they are kidding?" and planted it anyway....but, being mindful of their warnings, I put it in a very small bed away from everything else. Last year I spent a good amount of time ripping it out...and I know some of it will be back this year. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Oh well....live and learn. I guess sometimes we just have to make mistakes for ourselves and deal with the results. I still think it's a pretty plant though.

Ann, collect some of the seed pods when they are full size (you will see all sizes on the same stem), close to 1/8" in diameter, and put them in a paper bag to dry.

Thank you! Hope you remember.

So why don't I just buy some seed? I have not seen them offered anywhere, and this gives you the opportunity to do your good deed for the year.

grass

grass

Someone agrees with me! Yay!

Obedient plant! One of the most hideously misnamed plants in the universe. It was very pretty the first couple of years, and I foolishly planted it in several places. I have finally gotten rid of most of it, and what is left is in a place where it can't escape unless it goes under 3 buildings and a pad of concrete. I still weed up a few plants every spring in the places it used to grow.
Artemsia Oriental Limelight. Another beautiful plant. The tag says that it will get somewhere around 2 feet tall. Don't believe it. The first year mine was about that, the second year it was over 6 feet tall, before it shot up the gorgeous flower heads. It was breathtaking in full bloom, but it went from a 2" pot one year, to a 10 foot diameter by the end of the second year. I started pulling it up that fall, and spent last spring pulling the rest of it up and hitting the remains with roundup every time I saw one. I put one clump in a huge pot, sunk it in the ground, and it stayed smaller, but this spring there are 4 escapees from the pot. Now I have to go try to haul that pot out of the ground, and put it on some concrete somewhere so I can hack off anything that tries to escape.
I have some campanula..the kind that my mom called Ladybells (a friend refers to them as pesky ladybells) and they are all over, but they are easy to remove. I love them so much I let them run. I have a couple other campanulas that have a tendency to run amok, but they are in places where they are duking it out with things like an oriental poppy that went from one little plant 3 years ago to a whole bed.
I can't get the pink primrose to grow here for anything, which is probably just as well. I have also lost Japanese anemone more times than I can count. I just doesn't get going for me. I have a little bit of chameleon plant, and it's sort of spreading, but I dig a clump out of it every year to put in my bog tub, and that seems to have kept it in check, along with the campanula running over it.
Grass is probably the worst enemy here too. My dad calls it Quack grass...big heavy stuff with roots that can run for miles. I spend a lot of time every year digging it out. The worst is when it gets in a clump of ornamental grass. There is just no way to get it out of there. I have managed at times to hit it with round-up before the late-emerging grasses come up, but this year everything has been so early I didn't get to it. You have to do it late winter so you don't risk the grass that you want to keep.
Something else that runs amok for me is snowberry. I have one clump that has stayed in place and not run anywhere, and one that pops up everywhere.
I could add horseradish, but I have finally gotten rid of it. Several sessions with a tiling spade, and round-up every other week on the remains, and it was eradicated. Comfrey is very hard to get rid of, but I love it so when it's in full bloom that I tolerate it. I made the mistake once of putting what I thought were just some leaves on aging manure pile, but there must have been either a piece of root or some seeds in it. Now I have a beautiful clump of it right in the middle of my nicely-rotted cow manure. Mint...I fight it back constantly, several kinds of it, but it's isolated in the corner with the comfrey, and also with some (UGH) wild garlic.
I'm fighting a losing battle with Bishop weed at my dad's. We're just trying to beat it back. Chinese lanterns are mingled in the mix there, and right around the corner from it is some tansy that we're going to mow off this year. The whole bed has become a haven for a horrible vining weed my dad calls wild buckwheat. That stuff will grow up a tree practically overnight.
Linda P

Something called False Strawberry. got a two inch pot several years ago and it has taken over the backyard. In the beds, grass, between bricks....................

The Bishop's Weed is slightly contained. It is bordered by sidewalk, driveway and walkway with pavers. It may still be a losing battle.

And don't get me started on the bamboo. I didn't plant it-it was here when we moved in 15 years ago. No wonder the house was such a bargain. The roots are like steel and there is no eradicating it!

WOW now you guys have gave me some ideas. I have this huge place nothing wants to grow, top soil was pushed away last year. I have been trying to find something that will take over, guess not many want that to often huh?

Cricket

I planted two artemesia Limelights last spring, and figured they'd die come winter. They're all over the place! Even though they're beautiful, I'm going to try to eradicate them. If they're that invasive in just one year, I can imagine what it will be like next year!

I'm sure I'll never get rid of the Bishop's weed.

Is Artemesia Limelight a ground cover? I'm looking for something that will fill in between our garden shed and our mobile home. You are in the same zone I am so I'm assuming it will grow for me.