Plants Behaving Badly

lilac phlox in jeremy's border

Plants usually behave badly for a reason. Often the gardener has made a tiny mistake or a small misjudgement. Sometimes it's just a question of scale. Or you'll hear the popular excuse of bargain bin fanatics - there was no label anyway.

I've got some plants who are behaving very badly. I've checked back in my diary and felt extreme embarrassment as I read those first innocent comments...."have just bought a pot of Plantus Monsterus.....have planted it in Middle Border....hope it likes full sun..". Later the tone changes..."have had to cut back Plantus Monsterus. It is quite vigorous, wonder how big it will get....". Sometimes the record gets serious...."Plantus Monsterus seems to be happily self-seeding everywhere..."

Pretty Badly Behaved

The worst behavers can be the sneakiest and the prettiest. The prize at the moment in my garden goes to lilac phlox. This spring, in a fit of colour righteousness, I removed ALL the lilac phlox from Jeremy's border. I would plant blue pansies and salvias in the space so created, and these colours would complement the pale peachy tones of the Nancy Steen roses there.

It's now midsummer, and there is a large healthy flourishing clump of lilac phlox, right there in the middle of Jeremy's border. Where did that come from? The colour combination with Nancy Steen is just ghastly. I never even noticed its regeneration, until the flowers appeared. Hmm...

A well behaved Golden Hop

Second prize for offensive and selfish behaviour has to go to the 2001 version of my Golden Hop. This is a plant I have always admired in British gardening magazines. When a local mail order nursery offered these climbing plants for sale, I ordered.

Hopping Mad

I know now that controlling a Golden Hop requires a sort of tough love parenting mentality - where boundaries are set, with consequences, and these are rigidly adhered to. My own attempts at tough love parenting have been rather lame. My children still quote my most famous attempt at parental assertiveness - "If you do THAT again, I'm going to have to ask you not to...". With my pathetic history, I was obviously not going to be a suitable gardening parent for a Golden Hop.

The first season was fine! The Golden Hop covered the huge tree stump it had been bought for, looked beautiful in the evening sun, and the cut of its leaves were a perfect contrast for the neighbouring flaxes and rhododendrons. I cut it right back that Autumn, worried a little about frost, but left it, with a promise of "something to climb up next summer".

During winter I thought about getting a climbing frame built, or perhaps just nailing stakes to the stump - I had good intentions. Then Spring seems to fly by, and when I first remembered to check it the golden hop has devoured all plants within a three meter radius. I felt so guilty - that mother guilt all over again - and went off to try to find the hammer.

Although hiding a tree stump this Golden Hop is behaving VERY badly.

But something distracted me, and the Golden Hop was left alone to continue ravaging Middle Border. I finally remembered it a week ago, and grabbed the secateurs. It even had the nerve to attack me when I tried to cut it out of a neighbouring victim (a rrhododendron. Now I can't get near its tree stump to try some temporary carpentry. It needs a power pole. That's a job for next winter.....

Bad Habits

My bargain bin habits keep getting plants into trouble. I have to stop rescuing unlabelled clematis plants from sale tables. They look so forlorn and abandoned, but something strange then happens. No matter what leaf form or seed head they have at the point of sale, they all turn into Clematis Montana and run riot. There isn't a fence-line long enough or a tree high enough...

Clematis Montana

Early in my gardening career I tried to grow a Wedding Day rose up a tree. Wedding Day's idea of growth was "out", not "up", and out came its long thorny tentacles, writhing over and under every plant in sight. The next season it got the chop, and (unwisely) was thrown on a rubbish heap and left for dead

Two years later I suddenly noticed it alive, full of vigour, in the process of strangling the nearby pittosporum trees. Huge canes had grown up and over an old cabbage tree by the drive. This looked very stylish, and I felt inspired. Then just before flowering the wind blew all the canes down and left them waving over the driveway. Wedding Day was in deep trouble, and cyclists and night walkers were in serious danger. Guess what this Autumn's major clearing mission is!