Gardening boo-boos?

[Nicos]

We all make mistakes with our gardening and planning and I thought it might be fun to share our boo-boos!

Ya never know, we might learn from each other's mistakes too

Here is one of mine (yeh...there are plenty of others)

When we first moved here there was a small flower bed about 6 feet away from the back door.
My 'brill' idea...'wouldn't it be lovely to plant something scented to brush past each time we enter and leave the house'

Plant of choice was a Rosemary - culinary too , so extra brownie points eh?
Fast forward 13 years and that rosemary bush is 4ft high and 6 ft wide despite cutting it back from time to time.

Yes we certainly brush past it now...more like clamber through it but the biggest mistake is not realising how scratchy the old ,pruned back , hardwood is.

I really don't want to get rid of it cos it smells lovely and the number of insects and bees which visit the flowers are amazing.

I just wish I'd planted it another 4 feet further away


Your turn....

[nickdub]

I have a couple of oil tanks for the central heating at the top of my garden which are not the prettiest of things. Having had a think I planted an evergreen clematis armandii Apple blossom so it would grow up and make a living screen.

Well it certainly has grown up about 20' up, between a pear and an apple tree, plenty of leaves and flowers up there, very healthy. At ground level up to about 7' though, there are just three brown stems each approx 1" in diameter. So not much of a screen really - oops!

[Chestnut]

A rose planted near the corner of the house and trained up the wall. Beautiful, with a honeysuckle growing up through it"™s branches.
Downsides are red splodges over the floors and carpets every time OH takes stuff out to the bin wearing slippers, knocking noises at the back door every time there"™s a breeze making us think we had visitors more times than I care to admit, and quite a job to saw through the 4 inch trunk when it"™s grown right up against the wall (it was a choice between rose and having a working boiler...)

[greenishfing]

I once planted some horseradish!!!

[Plot70]

Bellflowers.
They self seeded and spread all over the place.
I was pulling them up for a couple of years.
Hoarsradish.
It has got under the path and is for ever coming up in the edge of the bed.

[ameno]

Time will tell quite how severe a mistake this was, but last year I grew some miner's lettuce in a pot on my patio. It's a short-lived annual and runs to seed pretty quickly, and I didn't bother to deadhead it.
This year, I have carpets of miner's lettuce coming up in quite literally every single pot on the patio, including, somehow, ones which were filled with new compost this year and so shouldn't even have been exposed to last year's seeds.

[burnie]

I've bought plenty of the wrong plants and planted plenty of them in the wrong place over the years, but on the whole I tend to plan and think things through before doing anything major, so trees that will get big are in the right location, pond seems to be in the right spot too, greenhouse sort had to go where it is due to room restrictions ditto the raised beds and the sheds. I'm guessing it's the engineer in me, a sort of measure twice cut once kind of thing only engineers might measure a dozen times lol.

[rary]

22 years ago when my granddaughter was born I had a large fish pond in the garden, the young boy next door fell into it once, fortunately he could only get access when there was someone there with him, but one of the family would have open access so didn't want to risk any mishaps I decided to tak it away, it was built with large sandstones about 2ft high though it was also about 2ft below ground level, part of the stone wall was used to fill the hole which was then finished of with some soil to fill it in, the area was then used as part of my patio, last week I started to clear a bit of the patio area so that I can plant some apple trees, this week had been spent digging it large sandstone blocks and of course I had done a bit of work and used the paving slabs for something else when I finally remembered where the fish pond was so will be a bit busy for a time

[bramble]

Planted a clematis Montana against my husbands shed.
The first few years it was lovely but then the shed roof started to leak and we realised the plant had burrowed under the felt on the roof.
It was far too vigorous so we dug it out and re roofed the shed.

[Mark Rand]

Bought a house with horsetail in the garden. 35 years ago...

[Robinahood]

Persisting in trying to grow things which hate the conditions. My soil is light, hungry and we can often be a very dry area. Examples would be sweet peas, honeysuckle.

[peanut]

Planted a "clump forming" bamboo from its pot into the ground. It is now coming up everywhere.