Do you have Love/Hate relationships with your plants?

Do you have plants growing in pots or in your gardens that you love to hate? or hate to love? I do...

One that I love is the blackberry lily (belamcanda chinensis). It has pretty iris like foilage and beautiful delicate flowers. Its blackberry like seed pods offer interest late into the year. But in the morning, the flower pods resist opening until I leave for work. When I get home in the evening, they must yell, "here she comes, close up ~ quick!" I rarely get to catch a bloom and I hate that!

Another one I love the foilage for is African Iris ~ Dietes. It is attractive and I've had it for 2 plus years without the first bloom. I hate that!

I have the african Iris, and have never seen a bloom in 3 years. I HATE THAT!

My squash blossoms do that to me. I'm thrilled to get squash blossoms, because that means eventual squash, but when I come home from work, the blossoms have already done their thing and faded.

I love and hate my goosnecks.

It's a plant my mother planted and loved in her herb garden and I love it for that. But it also takes over wherever it is planted and I hate it for that.

Same with obedient plant! I got ONE in a trade in 2002 and now I am overrun. But they are awesome when they bloom because everything else is done and here they come all happy!

Bearded Iris. Love the blooms. Hate the way the leaves go spotty and wither away from the top down, and the rhizomes go rotten after the dreaded borer finds them (and it always does). Somehow the plant never dies completely, just hangs in there looking sick and miserable.

Defoecat, I am glad I am not alone. I wonder what the answer will be. Have thought about digging them up and potting to see if a habitat change will make a difference.
White_Hydrangea, I know the letdown that is. Have you begun to see the squash? Amazing how quickly they can grow. You can almost watch them once they start.
Janiejoy, things just don't take over here. Our soil inhibits much. Wish that were a problem for us....
One plant I love is the sword fern, I put it in the ground and it provides lush green foilage with little effort. I hate that it dies down in our winters but love that it comes right back in the spring! Another love/hate thing...

June ~ Absolutely on the bearded iris. The bloom is gorgeous and the fragrance is heavenly but oh when the borer visits!

I absolutely adore my Allamanda for it's blooms... I hate it for complaining every single day about the amount of sun it's getting -- no matter how much water it gets, it goes into a dead faint EVERY day and looks absolutely wretched for hours on end. I hate how the tiniest splash of water can cause blisters on its leaves.

It started out as one of my Sweet Babies... now it is my most annoying Problem Child. If he doesn't shape up, he's certainly going to lose his showcase spot this Fall.

I had a yellow allamanda once. A beautiful plant but way too tempermental for me!

My Mother has a beautiful Alamanda. Foliage is so pretty and it seems to be happy as a lark. Still no blooms! None all summer long. She hates that. It probably won't be in her garden very long.

Kept mine in a pot and moved it in for Fall. It still couldn't stand the chill and died. I have tried it twice and will probably again. It is beautiful.

Dancey, what kind of sun does your Mom's get? I've read that the more sun they get, the more they bloom.

Of course, mine gets full afternoon sun (no morning sun) and it blooms like a trooper, but the foliage looks pretty ratty the minute it gets any age on it.

Cannas for me .. when the leaf rollers come a callin I swear to myself I'm gonna rip everyone out and plant something different. Then it starts blooming and I forget my frustration.

Add my Rain Lily to that as well. Grew those from seed, had them in a pot for 2 years and nothing .. so I said to heck with it and dug up all the bulbs and planted them all over my yard. Of course they started blooming then.

X

Here's one that is plant related... I like toads and frogs. Their system of bug control is wonderful! I hate that they make such a mess nestling down into the cool damp dirt in my pots. Most plants don't seem to mind tho...

Oh yes -- the frogs. We have an apartment over our garage that hubby uses as his office. To access it, you climb a flight of steep metal stairs. At the top of the stairs is the storm door with the all of the glass broken out (not done intentionally). On that door hangs one of hubby's large, leafy carnivorous plants (one that has LOTS of foliage and LOTS of pitchers hanging down).

One year he noticed "droppings" (that included bug bits) on the top landing -- just below the plant. Sure enough there was a frog living in the pot. We wondered, how in the world, the frog managed to find the pot at the top of a flight of stairs and hanging a couple of feet above the top landing... when hubby brought the plant in for the winter, he made sure froggy was removed.

And EVERY winter, froggy is removed to bring the plant indoors... and every summer, froggy comes back.

They are unique. I love watching one tree toad on the glass door or window when (and if) it rains. From the inside the toes look like suction cups...

Shelflife, my Mother's Alamanda gets some afternoon and evening sun. No morning sun at all. That may be the problem?

So funny about the frog Shelflife. ;) I guess they have a pretty good memory.

I'm having an aggravating time with my squash blossoms. They only bloom when I'm away. I was home all weekend, and no blooms. There's one ready to bloom, but I know it's going to wait until I'm either asleep or at work, and tomorrow night I'm going to come home to a wilted, spent blossom.

My love/hate relationship plant is the Hibiscus. I do love them, but, mine are always having thrip problems or white fly. I hate to spray them but I have to or will have no blooms. And they require so much fertilizing, the slow release granules don't seem to help. The only thing that gets me blooms is watering it in.

I haven't had thrip or whitefly problems but this one is in a pot. It suffers heat or water stress this time of year. I get lots of yellow leaves shedding, making it look ugly. Still have blooms tho...

Very pretty.

Part of the problem is a tree that keeps getting bigger and is giving more shade to the Althea and the Hibiscus I mentioned. It must weaken them so the bugs attack. I have so little sun in my yard and I can't limb up any more without it costing a fortune. It doesn't seem like there's as many pretty shade plants as there are pretty sunny plants. Or at least not that many that have pretty flowers.

My love-hate relationship is with ligularia "The Rocket." It's growing on a slope, and no matter what I do I can't keep it moist enough. I love the yellow flower spikes and the large leaves, but when they're wilted--yuck!

You made me look in the plant files. That is a pretty plant. It surely wouldn't like our drought this year! Have you mulched the soil or is it too big an area?

Agapanthus ( Lily of the Nile ) love to grow in my yard! I hate them. I have tried so often to dig them up only to find them growing again. I wish things I loved were so stubborn. I dug another patch of 20 year plus grouping that was at least 2 3/4 feet in circ. Still so many roots and tendrills that I guess I may have to pay the neighbor kids to pull out one by one.
If anyone wants some of these. I am not exactly sure how and where to cut as they are so massive, but I would be happy to try. And I know that they don't kill easily. Just dmail me.
Dayna

Dayna, Thanks much for the offer. I actually paid good money for some of these. I have kept them in a pot. The blooms are pretty but a disappointing short bloom time.

As I swept the front porch, I think I have another love/hate thing. I have two Hoya plants, love them when they bloom and like the fragrance. But when they are done blooming, the mess they make irritates me. They shed blooms and leaves all over.

Oooh I have another one.
Morning glories. They are beautiful but if they get to go to seed you will have a BILLION mg's the next year. And their seeds blend in with the soil!

and then they take over your world!

My husband comes from a farming family. His chores were to pull out and round up the winding weeds.
Years ago I pointed out a lovely morning glory and he argued with me that they were a weed. I had to actually show him a garden book to prove it. It had never occured to him that people would actually pay good money for them. He forbids me to grow any. He hates them!!!

Mgs can make you want to commit suicide! We have a wild one here that is viscious... grrrr! Called bindweed.

it grows up here in OH too, pod.

Nasty stuff when it takes hold!

One plant I always hated was grape ivy. When I lived with my parents, we had it climbing all over our fences. It wasn't a weed. It was supposed to grow there, but I hated it because it was as bad as bindweed. It would grab on to anything and just strangle it. We had a crabapple tree, and the grape ivy one time reached out, grabbed onto a tree branch and began to pull it toward the ground. It was my job to trim the grape ivy and rescue the other plants from its grip.

I never got to do anything fun! I shoveled the walks and the driveway, weeded, cleaned up the dog poop, trimmed the grape ivy, raked the leaves, and did all the boring, heavy chores. They tried to get me to mow the lawn, but I was too small to push the mower, so they had to give up on that. I was never allowed to choose flowers or even to plant them.

When you said 'grape ivy strangled the crabapple', it reminded me of a plant the grows here.

Wisteria! It is gorgeous in the spring when blooming, fragrant purple clusters of blooms hanging down from high in the trees like clumps of grapes. Just breathtaking! I love it!

On the other hand, it has been known to bring magnificent old trees (both pine and hardwood) to their knees. Nothing sadder to see a vintage tree die from being choked by the wisteria vine! I hate it!

Pod you are so right. Wisteria can definitely be a love/hate kind of shrub. We wanted one so we planted a rooted cutting from one of the family homesteads and it's about three years old now I guess. It is very pretty and is blooming again right now. It blooms off and on throughout the whole summer. Dh promised to keep it trimmed and keep an eye on it so it would not take over the place. So far he has kept his promise. :) We plan to get another rooted cutting this fall and plant it out in an area where there is nothing it can grab on to. I have no idea what species this wisteria is but it sure is a good bloomer and sure smells good too. I'm amazed that it's blooming in Aug.

I believe the Texas Wisteria isn't as aggressive as the Chinese Wisteria and it's just as lovely.

Your wisteria is beautiful Dancey. I have seen some folks who have planted one and keep it trimmed as a standard. They are lovely. One has to be vigilant tho as the roots send out runners and can silently take hold.

In 2000, my husband was in Methodist for an extended period of time. Being an outdoor person, I spent many an hour at the little park by the Institute of Religion. It was an oasis for me. They had wisteria growing over the arbors for shelter from the sun and that wisteria bloomed all summer. We went back in February and of course it is a warmer climate than here but this wisteria was evergreen. I did pick a seed pod but never started it. I often thought about contacting the Houston Garden Club to see what type it was. I had never heard of a Texas wisteria. Could that be it?

It could have been, the species name is macrostachya and it's native to Texas. The flowers are grapelike clusters.

Dh plans to do his best to keep our wisteria as a standard.
Our wisteria does go dormant in winter. I do not know what kind it is.

This message was edited Aug 20, 2006 4:29 PM

It is most pretty. You can tell where an old home place was out in the woods in the spring by the wisteria draping the trees. Tis beautiful... but...