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| After reading Rouge's post "which perennial do you love too much?", I started thinking about perennials I have fallen out of love with.
One of the wonderful aspects about gardening is that every year I find that my tastes and interests change and plants appeal to me that I never found enticing before. One could easily garden for a lifetime and constantly find new families of plants to covet and grow! When I was a new gardener I turned my nose up at annuals. Now, years later, I pass the bleak winter months by ordering and growing rare or unusual (to me) annuals under lights. Sometimes the unusual (to me) annual that I grow and fall in love with turns out to be a tried and true classic that I had never bothered to look at in the proper light before. That happened to me with 'Lemon Gem' marigold this year! What a cute and un-marigoldish plant! But back to perennials. Walking along my garden path today I realized that I may be out of love with geranium 'Rozanne', which took me a little bit by surprise! I have planted at least a dozen of these over the years and have always thought of them as the perennial whose color and form linked the different areas of the garden. It has always been a favorite. Now I'm not so sure. Now, I'm not even sure if I'm still charmed by the way they weave their lazy way through other perennials and shrubs. Whoa! Does that mean that I might be leaning toward a "neater" type of garden? I'm both worried and excited about what this realization means! I could end up with a yard of neatly clipped evergreens! Well, that's unlikely, but... How about you? Have you "fallen out of love" with a favorite? Has the end of an infatuation coincided with the development of a new gardening "style"? Have you looked at a single plant and changed your mind about which direction you wanted your entire garden to go? Adona |
Follow-Up Postings:
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- Posted by buyorsell888 Zone 8 Portland OR (My Page) on Wed, Jun 13, 12 at 19:44
| Yes, certainly though I can't think of any examples off the top of my head. I've shovel pruned or given away many plants over the years. |
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| As have I. It is rare, though, for me to suddenly realize I strongly dislike a perennial that for years past I have loved. I guess that's more what I was getting at. |
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- Posted by wonbyherwits z7b NC (My Page) on Wed, Jun 13, 12 at 21:48
| It's not so much falling out of love with a perennial as it is adjusting my expectations in light of the challenges of gardening (weather, critters, maintenance). Sometimes, I just want to "change up" a vignette or an entire section. Cameron |
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| Some yarrow- weedy, floppy, and generally unattractive. Some plants are less hardy than what I have read led me to expect, and that has led to disappointment- coneflower is one of them, salvia is also not as sturdy as I expected. While my spiderwort was very hardy, in the last 2 years large clumps have started turning brown for an unknown reason, and I have actually resorted to digging up large clumps of them and assassinating them. I still love my Rudbeckia but again a mysterious (to me) problem of first one stem, then another, and eventually a whole plant dying. Very frustrating! Brandy |
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- Posted by nutmeg4061 5b (My Page) on Thu, Jun 14, 12 at 0:53
| Sorry, Blackeyed Susans...but you are smothering me in our relationship. It's over. It's not you, it's me. May you find acres and acres to spread freely, just not here. I will continue to admire you from afar. Michelle |
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| Hm, am I the only person in the world who has never fallen in love with Geranium Rozanne and other Geraniums? My love to many plants turned to hatred, because they left me without a warning(nearly all new Echinaceas). But then I realised that dead plants are good. They have been tested and found unwanted. |
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| I've fallen in hate with particular perennials, but the divorce proceedings never last long. For one thing, everything old is new again when you garden over a long period. Gardens change, tastes change, climate changes. I've fallen in and out of love with phlox so many times that I can't keep up with it. But it fills the garden again. Over the past few years, I have reintroduced a number of old fashioned perennials in favour of newer cultivars or varieties that never "popped" for me. |
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| @wieslaw59: Just curious about the Echinacea's. Which ones were they and why? I'm in the process of buying and planting a bunch (hot lava, coconut lime, marmalade etc) and am a complete novice. First year planting stuff and I'm going overboard :D |
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| Tulips and lilies. At one point in time I couldn't imagine life without as many as I could fit into my garden. Slowly the minuses of growing both overcame the pluses. Weather, squirrels, the need to dig and divide or replace outright just got tedious. I'll still buy bunches of tulip flowers throughout the spring season because I think they're one of the most perfect flowers and I did keep a few lily clumps, but that's as far as I'm willing to go in the foreseeable future. Kevin |
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- Posted by purpleinopp 8b AL (My Page) on Thu, Jun 14, 12 at 11:19
| Most plain green things. Green lumps and clumps that make flowers for a short time once a year don't hold my interest much anymore. |
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| Mud god, there's a long older thread devoted to rating all the new echinacea. Do a search and it will pop up. I have fallen out of love with my old fashioned double peonies, except I do still love them in bud and in a vase. But in my garden they invariably end up flat on their faces. |
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| Mudgod , there are actually multiple threads on the new Echinaceas. Try to read them and then adjust your expectations according to whom you believe. Here in Denmark the hybrids of E.paradoxa generally failed big time. Coconut lime is a cultivar of E.purpurea and it can survive, but the stems are not paricularly sturdy. Razzamatazz is the best of the bunch for me. Pink Double Delight is a weak plant around here and it flops big time. The succes stories: Avalanche, Champagne Bubbles. Others : too short time to make a judgement. I have one Marmalade who survived one winter, 3 Hot Papayas , 1 Hot Summer,2 Irresistible and 1 Strawberry 'something', but will observe how they perform this season. |
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| grasses. Finding the weeding almost impossible, cannot tell which is a panicum, molinia, stipa, miscanthus etc. or just more poa and couch. Gets in all the crowns of perennials (has totally wrecked my lavender hedges) but mostly, I am bored with prairies and naturalistic now. Bedding plants - little splats of endless lurid colour - I relied on these in the early gardening years but if I see another begonia, creeping lobelia or ivy leaved geranium, I will spit. Annuals - too many years of growing millions of seedlings, only to have to do it all again (although I miss orlaya and nicotianas) Eryngiums - what was I thinking? nasty australian and new zealand shrubs - no more faffing with callistemon, tea trees, prostanthera, kangaroo paw and tedious hebes. oh, there are many, many I have fallen out of love with...... whole classes of plants in fact (iris, clematis) |
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| campanula wrote: Eryngiums - what was I thinking? Even though I have english relatives we are so not alike ;)! They are such unique plants which provide superb 'architectural interest'. I love my 'Big Blue'. Sometime in late June it will be in all its glory. I will post a picture if I remember. |
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- Posted by purpleinopp 8b AL (My Page) on Fri, Jun 15, 12 at 16:14
| Nandina. When I first moved here I thought it was cool but the romance has soured. Makes lots of leaves for the compost though. Loving this thread. Fascinating. Funny how decades of gardening can lead folks to such different ends! ...little splats of endless lurid colour - Campanula That's me all the way. All colorful, all the time, hardly any plain green leaves. Hope nobody tells my plants about all of the cool names out there. I didn't decide this, but my honey says they are all named Steve. I call them all Joy when he's not listening. |
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| Campanula, can you please tell us why clematis has delighted you long enough? |
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| I'm with Kevin on the tulips. . .too much additional annual work. . .but I sort of solved that by switching to species and greigii tulips. . .now I can have a "mini" tulip fix without the work! Only one ornamental grass I've given up on - Chasmanthium latifolium - Oddly, I have had exactly the opposite reaction to Nandina that purpleinopp Plant that finally got the axe this year - Primrose missouriana - that first burst Carl |
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| Carl You're right about the species tulips. My few clumps have persisted and multiplied for years. And the squirrels never touch them. I should add more. I mean to every year. But I don't. Kevin |
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| Siberian iris. Very beautiful, hardy, nice foliage but it seems in a week they are over. I was once smitten but am now ok with just a few small clumps. |
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| Kevin: RE: "I should add more. I mean to every year. But I don't." Same problem Right now, while the bulb season is still fresh in my mind, I go online Carl |
Here is a link that might be useful: John Scheepers, Inc.
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| ah clems - well I have had them (many) and finally, I am just fed up with the fragile dead-looking stems which must not be cut back (all pruning group2), am fed upwith either rampant bindweed like behaviour (and the horrible untangling of a Polish Spirit for example) at the end of the year. I have been known to lose my rag and go for the vicious pulling method but frequently end up dragging my roses off the wall too. Then there are C.montanas - eat a church in 2 weeks. The ongoing attempt with smaller integrifolias (to scramble gently through the perennials - they don't, they all rush in the same direction and it is always in the hardest place to get to. For a while, I thought viticellas were going to be my saviour, I dunno, I just got bored really, They fade, they get wilt, they are stingy bloomers (texensis). Anyway, I am down to just a couple - a rampant V.purpurea plena elegans which scrambles through New Dawn - I definately do the brutal tugging and shearing...but I do it with both of them or ND would take over my minute garden. Also, I have 1 really garish Fireworks (my daughter gave it me) which is exiled to the lurid corner and does sterling duty on a chainlink so in an ugliness contest between galvanised wire or dead wood, the dead wood becomes pleasantly rustic (as opposed to industrial nihilist style (my allotment looks out on a factory and a building site) I guess it is clear that I have plant obsessions, regardless of their utility or suitability for my climate or conditions - it has taken me YEARS to break this habit although all that has changed is having a bit more nous about what is likely to work, given the limitations on soil, climate, space and time - the obsessions still remain....in fact, I feel a post coming on about my latest..... (sometimes these things are very fleeting (dieramas, geums), sometimes last for years(tulips, amazingly, they have turned about to be something which loves my crappy sandy soil, dry east anglian winds), sometimes come and go (roses) So many plants, so many epic fails! |
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