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A Cautionary Tale .....
Sue Higham
Posts: 85
in Plants
I expect it will be too late for many who have succumbed to the charms of Schizostylis, the Kaffir Lily, but if you have one in a pot, my advice is to leave it there and don't plant it in the open ground. The flowers are very beautiful and I used to value it as it bloomed in November - but it's run riot through my lavender, paeonies and roses. I filled 4 trugs full of unwanted shoots in February but the roots are very brittle and each bit left behind has grown tentacles, with small rhizomes too. It's worse than couch grass!!!
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It sure am. And even if you buy the lovely white form it soon dies off and you end up with the red one...........................everywhere.
Yet I struggle to grow that in any shape or form!!
I bought a very nice shrub some years ago, cannot recall its name, it has very divided pinnate leaves and trusses of fine white flowers - and it is a thug par excellance!! I am forever pulling unwanted bits out of the garden, it has runners that must be yards and yards long.no warning on the label of course, which is long since lost so I can't even tell people what to be warned about.
Yes, defiinitely bamboo! Didn't know it was the spreading type and took over the whole of the back of our pond, turned up 5 meters away in the lawn, up drains etc. Took over a year to kill it and are still digging out the roots!
Variegated ground elder - it just loves my warm, free-draining raised bed.
Tomorrow it's going to have a lovely drink..........of glyphosate!!!
Thanks for the warning about Shizostylis, I've just noticed that there are a lot of smaller leaves round the plant - obviously putting on their running shoes......
The other FAVOURITE, FAVOURITE, fruit of mine which I've had to eliminate is autumn fruiting raspberry - I'm heartbroken but "Such an easy plant to grow - doesn't need the framework and maintenance that summer varieties do" .... Yeah, right! I think it's in a secret society with bamboo!
In process of re-configuring veggie garden and am opting for summer raspberries instead - swapping one kind of 'maintenance' for another!
As a kid my parent's grew raspberries. So:
R on your cornflakes / porridge
R with icecream
R in pies with apple
R on rice pudding
R on a plate
R with every damn thing everyday... as well as having to pick them
40 years later I don't mind the odd one or two.
I think the worse thing is looking at a Nursery stall at a Plant Hunter's Fair and seeing things on sale for staggering prices, that I have just spent hours digging up and composting since they are such thugs. I mean Sorbaria Sem or Hieracium maculatum or Anemone japonica or Geranium Roxanne and indeed all its brothers and sisters. I could add a few dozen more to the list too.
..I caution anyone planting English Bluebells in their garden... once you've got them you'll never get rid... they seed everywhere as might be expected.... a glory of woodland but in small modern town gardens... you'll soon tire of them...they don't look right...
Crocosmia. Pleasant but gosh it grows. Found it in the lawn, coming up gravel paths, miwed up in pots. Good thing I like the green leaves and yellow-orange 0r red flowers.
Bronze Fennel. If you grow it for goodness sakes don't let it seed. It's a B******r to get rid of as it has a real thug of a root.
The other one is Carex Comans Bronze. Bought one about 8 yrs ago, still pulling out the offspring.