Wild Violets. One turned into an invasive mess choking out everything with its tight clumps and dense, fibrous roots from congested rhizomes. I WAS warned; I'm wondering if they were possibly the reason for the decline in so many plants that year. Last year was better!
I'm still digging them out though...

Trumpet Vine. Not my pick, but my god I'm still digging up suckers five years on.

Sage and Thyme didn't like the cold and wet.

I killed at least six bare root roses last year between sloth and the "it's in my head" kind of "meh" because I left them in buckets too long.

Kristine, what is the beautiful pale pink rose in your photo?

Sorry if I offended with the alyssum rant! I *do* like the ones I see in six-packs, just not the invasive ones in my neighborhood that look ratty most of the year.

You're all making me nervous about violets...and ruining my image of "violet vale" from Anne of Green Gables! I keep trying to plant violets, and this year finally have a couple from Annie's Annuals doing well -- viola odorata duchesse du parme and viola whopping purple whiskers. Will these become my next big regret??

Nose, that is my new Bliss. I think she will be a winner.

I think this aftetnoon I better get out and get those Violets away from the base of At Last and Cinco De Mayo

Deborah , I think Stephanie was doting over her violets from Annie’s on another thread a while back! She really raves about them . I think those will be ok .

Kristine, bliss is one of my best roses . If I could plant a hedge of them I would !

Deborah, I have a parma violet from Annie's and it is pretty mild mannered -- no attempts to take over the universe yet! It spreads a bit, but not in an unwelcome way.

Parma violets are very different from garden variety violets. A friend was giving me passalong plants years ago,and a tiny bit of wild violet must have been mixed in with the things I wanted to grow. Oh boy. They are pretty but tough and spread like crazy. They require constant monitering and pop up all over the place, plus they don't have the scent that Parma's do. Diane

Deborah, I have that Duchesse du Patime from Annie’s Annuals and it has only made one offset in the 3-4 years that I’ve had it. I WISH that it would spread more. The flowers have such a heavenly fragrance.

Thanks, Kristine. it’s beautiful! Yours looks a bit like Olivia Rose Austin. Now what can I take out to put one in?!

Kristine, alyssum does fine for me, but I have a dry climate and mostly lousy soil. But, you reminded me of my biggest garden mistake !@#$% trumpet vine. I grew it along the front porch railings for several years. Then we tore it out (we thought) about ten years ago. Up it came in the middle of my big boxwood, and up it came in the basement window boxes. It crawled along under the porch, and I'm surprised it didn't join us for dinner. I think last year there was just one small bit of it coming up near the porch. It's finally about conquered. I also have morning glories coming up in three spots where I grew it. In one place, it's been persisting for almost 15 years. Diane

Lots of little devils. Diane

After the HOA gave me grief all summer for the trumpet vine overhanging the wall, I took it out. Or so I thought. I battled it for 5 years as sprouts came up all over. I checked for new shoots every day, and they could grow several inches tall in a single day. I sprayed with RoundUp (and I hate using RoundUp) for years before it finally went away. My friends planted it in their yard a few years ago. I warned them, but they said that they wanted something the hummingbirds would like, and that they could handle it. Last time I was at their house (before COVID), it had taken over the yard, coming up everywhere, climbing and engulfing the mature blue spruce. Doesn't look like they could handle it. Their yard used to be beautiful, now that side of the yard is all covered with trumpet vine.

Haha almost joined you for dinner ! That’s funny !! I’m so glad mine never took in Pa . When I was a brand new gardener , I planted a bunch of plants on my fence ( shared with neighbors) Come to think of it .. my neighbor was an older gentleman well versed in gardening and I bet you he sprayed round up on it . And I don’t blame him one bit . Because I asked him if I could plant it and he told me what could happen but I thought hey who cares that sounds lovely ! Haha I literally had no real idea .

Those violets look delightful, I could see how easily you could fall into a trap!

What a horror story, noseo. Here, the hummingbirds paid no attention to trumpet vine, but the wasps loved it--ack.

Lily, I'll bet your neighbor did spray the trumpet vine. And he did you a favor. I don't like round up much anywhere near my flower beds, so we couldn't spray the vine. I can imagine what would have happened to the big boxwood if we had sprayed the t-vine coming up right through the middle of the boxwood.

The violets do look nice, and when they're through blooming, the leaves look good until hard frost, but they are sneaky little devils reproducing and spreading by seed and runner both. Diane

I confess to having killed several potted roses through overwatering, and to rototilling bindweed the first year I tried to have a vegetable garden. Turns out, rototilling not only does not kill bindweed but spreads it to uncontrollable proportions. I fought it tooth and nail til we moved.

Diane, you crack me up. Your crack conjured up images of the little shop of horrors plant. Feed me, Seymour!

Mine also is a ground cover woe, planting Blue Star creeper, it's so pretty but spreads so fast in my garden. my goal is to rip it all out this month.

Second is not checking or doing a preventative spray on succulents I buy outdoors before potting them for indoor containers. I have had aphid invasions 3 times.

Oh and probably my biggest. We bought our current house but spent half a year remodeling before we moved in. Even though, it was a record high summer, we didn't live there and our water was turned off, I decided our new garden needed flowers! So I spent almost every day hauling water over to the house to water my "flowers". To add to that I was severely pregnant with two toddlers. I'm blaming pregnancy on that blunder.

This is such a good thread! Ah, solidarity in our mistakes.

I'm so glad you all are talking about those wild violets. I had one come up in my yard this fall and thought I'd watch it and let it try out it's spot (I've done the same with wild bleeding heart and wild ferns that have volunteered beautifully in the extremely shady corners of my yard). I'm going to yank that violet out today! What a mistake it would be to "give it a chance"! I've already got bindwind and blackberries to deal with each year (coming over from the neighbors side of the fence) and the mint I mistakenly planted. I don't need another vigorous weed!

@librarian_gardner_8b_pnw that's always me, if I see an interesting sprout I just leave it out of curiosity and because I still feel bad pulling out most plants 😅 I definitely would have left it too.

Wild bleeding hearts? That sounds like a lovely bonus surprise.

@Mischievous Magpie (CO 5b) it was a lovely surprise to have the native wild bleeding hearts come up. The ferns, too! They grow in a narrow spot between our house and the fence that is very shaded by trees and gets maybe only 2 hours of sun. What would be a barren narrow walkway is transformed to a secret foresty path thanks to these two non-invasive volunteers.

But gosh, my good experience with them tricked me into allowing the violets elsewhere. Glad I can intervene before the violets become a huge mistake!

Yes, Diane, those are the ones! I'm not talking about the sweet little Johnny Jump Up Violas. Those are pretty easy to control. But those wild/garden violets are THUGS! They spread by seed and root and the roots get huge and thick and you can't pull them out. They choke out anything else in their path. Even the roses have a hard time competing with them. I have one shady bed on the North side of the house that nothing will grow in BUT the violets survive, lol!

@librarian_gardner_8b_pnw, I love those unexpected gifts that the garden can yield! You never know what you can end up with as far as volunteers go. My luckiest garden gift actually was a rose! The first spring we lived in this house, I was weeding on the north side of the house and noticed a tiny, tiny gangly plant only about 3" high that I didn't recognize, but it has absolutely beautiful coloring on the few leaves it had so I left it alone and instructed my husband to do the same. Then I forgot about it. North side of the house, with a full grown evergreen to the east of it and a high solid fence to the west, that thing was getting absolutely no sunlight, and no water. How it survived is beyond my understanding. But the second year it grew to about 6" before my then-5 year old excitedly told me he'd found a rose growing, and led me back to it. Sure enough he was right, what a clever kiddo to recognize a rose just by the then-sickly looking leaves. We moved it to the main garden where it put on some good healthy growth. So now I've got my fingers crossed that it blooms this year. Other than "rose" I have no idea what it is or how it got there and survived.

Ah...you all are reminding me of more than my own blunders now...one year I used this much touted "Bu's Blend" Biodynamic Compost from rescued dairy cows who now got to live some kind of magical life pooping in Malibu. I bought a couple of bags and spread that all over my rose garden. Months later, I had several little volunteer plants coming up that I didn't recognize, but hoped were lovely little seedlings from whatever seeds I'd hopefully tossed out (which I do every year because I never learn). But then they started to get big and kind of take over and weren't super attractive, so I assumed it must have been a weed. So I grabbed a big 'ole handful, and got the shock of my gardening life. PAIN!!! I learned later that this was stinging nettle. And when I looked it up, I discovered that it has three chemicals -- one makes you burn, one makes you itch, and one intensifies the effects of the first two. Evil weed!!! I know there's some herb that you can put on top of that, but I don't remember what it is, and I'm sure I'm not growing it. One of them escaped my attention, and I was out of town for a month, and when I got back I saw that it had set seed. So for about 3 years I had to keep pulling this horrid weed (with gloves on, obviously). I figured out that it only came up where I'd spread the magical manure -- and their recipe lists stinging nettle (yes, I know it has many good uses for people and plants). But they shouldn't have live seeds in their manure! Sheesh.

The other memory is when I found a little rose seedling in the decomposed granite between flagstone pavers on my patio. It was close to my high hopes climbing rose, but also to my revert to rootstock pink rose. It was pink, very pretty. I let it grow for a couple of years, but didn't love it enough to keep it, so gave it to my neighbor next door last year. I should ask how it's getting on!

These surprises are what keep gardening interesting!

The house next door is vacant since the death of the owner. She and her husband were original to the house built in the early 60s.

She has 5 roses planted along the front curb that have probably been there for as long as the house had.

The are pretty neglected but somehow manage to put out some decent blooms. One is a beautiful red and one is a pure orange color.

I was going to prune them this year even though new owners will probably yank them out.

Too late. Yesterday I saw one of the neighbors walking by with his chain saw. 5 minutes later the roses were pruned lol. Ha ha, some peoples idea of pruning. A man and his chainsaw can accomplish much.

To his credit he has been keeping up the empty house for months so that it doesnt look unlived in.

Fortunately he missed the one closest to my house that I have been dying to prune for 5 years. I guess now is my chance and I promise that I wont use the chainsaw

Deborah, ah, yes, the dreaded stinging nettle. I had a close encounter of the nettle kind as a child (in Washington), and learned to avoid them. I think maybe aloe vera is the leaf you smear on to take the sting out of nettles. What idiots to not get the seeds out of their gourmet manure. Below is Audrey ll which appeared in a flower bed this spring, nestled among the black eyed Susan, which it quickly enveloped. It grew to 3X3 feet in a few weeks and then sent up a stalk that looked like it would max out at about 6 or 7 feet. I figured out this was a wild verbascum, a biennial whose rosette was hidden by the rudbeckia the first year. Then the second year, up it popped. But then it started singing to me..... Diane

Feed me, Seymour!

@Diane Brakefield - so glad you "get" me! I found a greeting card once with a black sheep (in a bowtie?) amidst a sea of white sheep and it said, "adding to my misery, no one here thinks I'm funny..."

Haha! “Gourmet manure”! Reminds me of “zoo poo” which I bet the roses would love. I suppose it *could* be considered gourmet, as I’ve read about people harvesting nettles and cooking them to eat. Supposed to be nutritious. I think they sold them at the local co-op (with warning signs) and I know one nursery who sold plants for that purpose. You sure wouldn’t want to make the mistake of making a salad.

It’s dock that takes the sting out when you get stung by stinging nettles. I can attest to it working!

Noseo, I didn't know dock was useful for anything. I know aloe vera leaves (the gel inside them) work on sunburns. I've heard of nettles being eaten cooked, but I'll pass. Ooh, a yummy nettle salad--I'll bet it's a little like "Habanero Pizza" that my son in law orders from his favorite pizza place. I grow habs for him, too. He eats them every which way. And I'm sure that you like your hot peppers, too, being from New Mexico. Our all around hot pepper fav is Thai Hot, which we use a lot in cooking.

Deborah, I do get you, and love your sense of humor. I'm definitely that sheep, and the older you get, the more people think you should be serious and gloomy. By the way, my son in law (when in college) played the role of Audrey ll in a very professional production of Little Shop. He has a fabulous singing voice, but used a synthesizer to get the right effect of Audrey ll. That was probably my very favorite stage production, among those I've seen from Broadway to LA. Diane

If you have space, wild native violets are the host plant of spangled fritillary butterflies. To witness clouds of these creatures flying about is an incredible experience. I saw this in woodland glades in my friend's large wild garden in the Hudson Valley, which was across the road from an experimental organic farm. Only think if we had more organic farms like that! At any rate I will never disparage wild violets again, unwelcome though they may be in my tiny flower beds.

https://www.plantnovanatives.org/post/accidental-environmentalism-the-case-of-the-unexpected-butterflies

@monarda_gw "weed" is such a subjective word, isn't it? Thanks for sharing.

@Diane Brakefield, even the volunteers look glorious in your garden. The wild verbascum in my garden has never achieved such a happy, huge size.

Oh, I loved reading everyone's experiences and laughing at the humorous anectodotes!!! We are a fun and funny group! :)

My biggest mistake was planting Chameleon plant. I also transplanted some of this alstroemeria from my grandmother-in-law's yard. I like it but it is starting to jump from one bed to another. I have a wild verbascum which I think is a wooly mullein. It is not a problem because only one or two seedlings from it ever come up. It is just fun to have it reappear. It has fuzzy silver/.grey leaves and yellow flowers. Another mistake I made was planting too many trees. I love the trees but the shade has been too much for parts of my garden. Another mistake was planting any English Ivy at all. We have violets but they came in uninvited. It's probably a mistake not to do something about voles.

The alstroemeria:

Love the alyssum. Most of the time it hasn't done well for me. I raised some from seed last year and it bloomed most of the season. I gave it a haircut late in summer and it rebloomed. I tried some of the tetraploid alyssum which is supposed to be more heat tolerant and has bigger flowers. But I don't know if the alyssum that did well was the tetraploid or plain old Carpet of Snow. I lost the label.

My biggest mistake was planting a whole bunch of something before knowing if it would work in my yard. I planted lots of incrediball hydrangeas only to find out the wind rips and shreds them to pieces here. I dug them up and am trying them in more protected places and planted limelights instead and they are doing so much better. Next time I'll try something before investing so much time and money in a whole project. I do love alyssum but don't like the late summer slump it seems to develop.

Ashley Smith zone 5a - Sounds like a normal gardening experience to me!

My biggest mistake was forgetting that the bamboo in the pot that sat for many years on my apartment patio was actually a running not clumping bamboo. I planted it along the retaining wall property line to make a screen from the neighbors messy yard and utterly rusted white metal fence. Back then our back yard was just lawn, but I had to patrol the lawn for bamboo stalks that would pop up everywhere. Then the neighbor divorced and remarried and the new husband wanted to know if I would cut the bamboo lower so they would have a deck view once he built a deck. Well I took that opportunity to say we would be happy to remove it entirely! He removed it all! I was so relieved and it was a big job. He is like my dad, a construction guy. My DH is a computer programmer and not into digging. Since then we had the back landscaped and the new husband built a great fence. So it looks like this. Compassion climbing rose where bamboo used to be.

The fancy double violets from Annie’s called ‘Duchesse De Parme’ and ’Comte de Brazza’ don’t make seeds. They are not too vigorous in our hot climate and spread into a wonderful green carpet in a spot with only 1-2 hours sun a day. They don’t like 110F days and their leaves from last summer all have crispy edges but soon Spring will bring new growth. They smell incredible! Fragrance only lasts one day in vase but flowers last 7 days. In mini vases.

Those fancy Parma violets are nothing like the wild ones, Stephanie. They sound lovely, and I love your landscaping and the beautiful climber, Compassion. I've read many times how invasive bamboo can be, so I'm glad this all worked out for you. Wild violets have their place if you make them keep it, but it requires vigilance. Another old passalong plant I love, a grandchild of an ancient original plant is Brunnera, false forget me not, or heartleaf, or Siberian bugloss. It spreads slowly, but is not too difficult to remove, and has the most lovely forget me not type flowers that last for at least six weeks. After flowering, the heart shaped leaves grow huge as the season progresses. I've given clumps of starts of this plant to friends and family, and back to the friend who originally gave it to me. I'm not sure how hot a climate it can tolerate, but it needs shade. Diane

My biggest mistake was a COSTLY mistake......

I grew up in the midwest.... the trees there had large root systems... but when I came to Florida I would see these huge palm trees with small root balls being hauled up and down the highway on trucks. So when I moved into our house with a yard I thought great I could have trees.... I had this little royal palm tree that started as a volunteer next to the house. I though NICE. It doesn't have a big root system and I could use it as a structure for a climbing rose.... so I did.... well first of all the root system on the royals going up and down highway on the back of trucks was MASSIVELY deceptive.... The roots are fiberous.... and they created a mat very thick and it over took the climber killing it.... but even worse even though they are fiberour they broke the concrete of my porch and tile..... costing oodles to fix.

I had so many royals around my house that I had been nurturing some 18 to 20 feet high and I wanted to get rid of them before they tore up more foundation. I dug them up and gave them to our church because they wanted new landscaping.... unfortunately I probably should have hired a tree service to move them.... they all died.... must have been 20 to 30 of really nice size palms.... but to me they were and ARE weeds.

@sharon2079 the like button doesn't seem like an appropriate response. Gardening is such a learning experience, especially when moving to a new climate. It'snice when we can laugh in retrospect, but that's not always the . I'm sorry you had such a costly experience.

Stephanie, I would love to know how he dug it all out.

does it count as a mistake if you keep repeating it?

I continually plant things without the mature size in mind.

I think the first “problem” I’ll have is with a couple Teasing Georgia roses which are in spaces only 4ft wide.

ill have and update on those in about 10 weeks

jc, this is real problem that's not your fault, particularly with David Austin roses. The size estimates are not for a lot of US locations. And on HMF, I can't believe how small most of the size estimates are. The funniest one was for Ascot (the size estimate of this rose was hilarious on Palatine's site, too). Over several years, they kept raising the estimates. I don't think they have it right yet. And it started out as a floribunda; then a HT; then it became a grandiflora. This was back in 2013 and 2014. Basically, Ascot is a tree here. So, it's easy to underestimate how much space you'll need for a rose in many cases. Diane

I think I remember someone saying their TG was 8x8.

Whoops.

Diane is this why you say you don’t have any space left? 😂

I’m looking forward to this growing season because I’m pretty much committed to my big mistakes and will make plenty more trying to accommodate

Vaporvac, He got out the bamboo by brute force. Also our soil is pretty sandy so he would pull and then follow the root and keep pulling. It had actually escaped our yard but we didn’t know it yet. It had moved around the retaining wall and then behind it and was going to start growing in his yard that year! He was so happy to pull it all out for us! The runners under the lawn stayed but it was mowed every week so that just died out after a year.

Thank you. We cut mine down and I continue to dig it out and cut it down. So far so good but you cannot believe how this stuff has walked. What a nightmare. Here's a picture of my helper taking it out. We work so hard together. I have to go find the picture. Oops. This may take a while.

I totally plant with no regard for final size always and will never change ! Don’t ask why , if I see a place bigger than a foot and a half to two feet , I think a rose can and should go there ! And I haven’t adjusted that here either and it will bite me in the butt in a year or two ! Or maybe it’ll be someone else’s problem 😂.

Another problem I have is buying with no place to put them ( any plants ) , and hoarding garden decor bargains for my next garden . I’m living in faith that I will one day have a large yard again and I’ll need lots of decor ! I don’t regret that tho .

Ah ha, Lily. I know your problem--you figure on moving every few years, at which time, as you so honestly said, it will be someone else's problem. Darn. I guess I should move more often. But, I'll bet you could plant a couple of dozen more roses in my flower beds without breaking a sweat. Age has made me lose my nerve, I guess. I hope you find that big place with lots of room for roses and garden decor. Diane

Stephanie - oh that must have been amazing to hear that he wanted it gone and that he would do the work!!! WOW!!! What a gift!!

Sharon - YIKES...the plants/trees were breaking your foundation! I'm so glad you got them out. That's a win whether or not they died...in my book. :) :)

jc - love that about making the same mistakes...hey we're human...that's encoded into our DNA. LOL

Yay Lilyfinch!!! Living life to the max. Love it! :)