I was just pulling up some gooseneck loosestrife & thought it might make a good topic. A friend gave it to me a couple of years ago along with some tansy & I planted them in my flower bed. I didn't know any better. Finally this year I gave up all hope on the bed, covered it with about 20 thicknesses of newspaper, well overlapped, and then covered with about 12" of mulch. The tansy is officially gone, but the gooseneck will reach through the layers & pop out. The roots on these suckers are at an angle at least 6" long. I guess diligence is the name of the game now. Live & learn

batavian escarole. Its not that great to eat, and impossible to clean without GREAT quantities of water running over it for hours due to its all over prickly hairs holding the dirt. After getting it clean its usually bruised, and lasts about five minutes even in a lettuce keeper. Hate it. No one else wants it either.

Mint. I don't even remember what kind it was I planted, but I'm glad I moved when I did. It was taking over the whole brick sidewalk I'd planted it beside. Glad it's someone else's problem now!

Butter and eggs. Yellow toadflax, that is. I accepted it from a neighbour who thought she'd be planting a lovely wildflower garden, and since these looked like miniature snapdragons, I figured they'd be cute enough in my own perennial garden.

It engulfed EVERYTHING. I spent the next four years pulling the stuff out whenever I saw it rear its head. The neighbour moved, and the new people ripped out both front and back yards, and relandscaped everything.

I still have to yank a stem or three every week, but I'm happy that it's officially a minor nuisance now.

Cane!!
Still trying to get rid of it. Wish I had a bulldozer. :|

It "uproots" carefully laid patio rocks! X-(

Trumpetvine! Thought it would be so pretty twining around my front porch posts. Three years later I am still pulling shoots out of the ground all over the flower garden. It makes an underground runner that goes everywhere!!

Sea oats!! Beautiful plant when I had ONE. Little did I know it would seed itself everywhere :_| Major root systems almost impossible to dig out. BIG mistake!! Been relocating as much as I can to my brother's place as he has the room. It's actually a beautiful plant, great if you want to fill in a large area, which I don't have. I'm stuck with it now, forever! By the way, anybody want any sea oats?
Judy :x

wow! i'm glad i stumbled onto this site! i was gonna order some goose neck loose strife in the fall.....

My mom learned a lot through trial and error in the garden. There was something we had growing when I was little--I think it was rice paper plant or something--there are photos of me climbing it. I think that's the one where one day, a lady who had come over to the house commented on them and about how either she or someone else we knew had extensive damage to either the plumbing or the foundation of their house due to those plants. Mom says she had them out and in the trash by the time Dad got home from work.

Almost any kind of ornamental vine, except for star jasmine. We had this beautiful vine with little pink flowers--I think it was called "Queen's Wreath." It proved to be a threat; a few days ago, I noticed some coming up & we got rid of it. But the worst so far was the honeysuckle. Until we grew it, we had no idea it was invasive. I started it from cuttings from a neighbor's plants, but at the neighbor's house, it was just honeysuckle on the fence, and lawn going up to it, so they probably just weed-whacked it. (We started it to cover the chain link fence, because at the time, there were a bunch of teenage boys two doors down and we didn't want them looking at us when we were in the yard; our current next door neighbor put up a fence on their side so we don't have to worry about the boys seeing into our yard.) At first the honeysuckle was beautiful, but it started to threaten other plants--it strangled one of our rockroses. So we had our gardener dig it out (he really helps us a lot with the heavy digging and the weeding :x ).

And I made the mistake of putting a variegated vinca major (that I started from a cutting) into one of my little container gardens--it jumped the pot and threatened to take over the world. X-( --J--

Oh, that is scary stuff!! I always like loosestrife, too, such interesting flowers. Ah, well.

I actually like my trumpet vine, but it never needs water, and it still grows like a weed. But it's easy to trim, and it drops great amounts of leaves for compost. The beautiful sunset-colored flowers are just gorgeous.

My biggest problem is a queen palm. It's about 8 feet tall, and one is fine, but it shoots pods 15 feet away, and even though it doesn't rain here for 8 months, little palms start growing. It takes a pick axe and a 3-foot hole to get them out.

The electric company here took a chain saw to one of them that was under the wires, and it looked dead, but it actually came back looking better than ever. So now I know to cut the long fronds back at the base, and encourage new growth.

The only other drawback is that it's near a tree with big leaves that fall into it that clog up the centers, it needs shaking and a broom to get them out. And when the electric company cuts things like this, they put them in their own shredder, but they won't shred palms, so I have to chop them up with clippers and use the stems as vegetables stakes. :|

Nice to know I'm not the only one who planted a single variegated vinca major and had it take over. That thing has reached underneath concrete footings and is coming up in my dog pens!

I've not planted anything that would cause problems or regret but my clients sure have.


Insanely Stupid Garden-client Decisions, from worst to, well, worst -

Bamboo, any type - once planted will never, never be eradicated from the property

Virginia Creeper - no one should deliberately plant this

Multiflora Rose - used and beloved as pasture hedgerows in New England, impossible to control in garden situations.

You are so smug. X-(

:^O :^O

Glad to hear that. I saw some, it was so pretty & thought I'd plant some.