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springcherry

Least Favorite Garden Fad

springcherry
20 years ago

Interesting foliage is a good thing but ...

I am so bloody sick of seeing "purple" leafed plants that are really a dingy maroony brown paired with blindingly bright chartreuse. Oh yeah, with maybe a few harsh, discordant bits of magenta flower thrown in for good measure. Now, of course, the garden porn in the magazines never look like this. Nope, they use filters and color correction to get the purple all bright and shiny. But in RL, I see this color disaster all the time.

If I put together an outfit in that color scheme and wore it outside, people would cross the street to get away from me. No one would wait on me in shops. The bottom-line for garden color schemes is -- would you be caught dead wearing it as clothing? If the answer is a big fat no, then -- DON'T PLANT IT!

Springcherry

Comments (144)

  • Katt_TX
    20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    It's been around so long, I don't know if you'd call it a fad, but I find the overuse of shrubs rather unattractive - especially when they are pruned to an extreme hard edge or allowed to cover large portions of the house.

    It's my personal opinion, but I'd like to see a new 'fad', where the use of shrubs is diminished and/or more soft choices are made that enhance architecture.

    Another one: overuse of ground covers [especially when they aren't properly maintained]. There's no free lunch and even when you put in ground cover there has to be something occasionally done to it. Particularly annoying when adjoining neighbors don't stay on top of that stuff [ahem] and allow it to grow onto other people's property, leaving someone else with a task that they 'didn't sign up for'.

    And... red mulch is hideous.

    --Katt

  • rjyoaslh
    20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Wood chips! If I never see another wood chip in my life, it'll be too soon. When we moved into our house, which had been a college rental for 20 years or so prior to our buying it, my first priority outside was to get rid of all the wood chips and the horrendous pink rock that the former owners had used as a masquerade (didn't fool anyone) for the poor, abused yard. I shoveled and bagged wood chips through a few warm-weather seasons, uncovering lots of dirty gravel, more than a foot deep in some places and littered with bottlecaps and broken glass and other odds and ends. I removed all of the pink rock to reveal a brick path, built not with pavers but with cheap red brick that was crumbling into dust. But, I would much rather have started from ground zero than to have had to work so hard to remove all that #*#! they threw on top of it! That was clearly an abuse of wood chips, but I also dislike them when used as mulch. They are not the kind of things that blend seamlessly into the landscape, and they also have a tendency to leap from their beds and situate themselves into every other part of the yard.

  • westtxteach
    20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Plastic Flowers! I've always thought they were for people who just wanted it to LOOK like they worked in their garden.

  • Wendy_the_Pooh
    20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    What do people think about SILK flowers mixed in with real in a barrel? I saw that in front of a store recently.

  • fishcookie
    20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    The lovely thing about silk and plastic flowers is that they bleach out and turn colorless in a few weeks of sun exposure. The purpose of this form of decoration must be to enhance the beauty of the neighbor's yard.

  • glassmouse
    20 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I make stained glass art (hence the name), and for several years I've laughed myself sick over the appearance of "garden art" paraphernalia in the stained glass supplies catalogs. Mosaic stepping-stones, stained glass butterflies on garden stakes, etc. The worst, and most hilarious, always seemed to me to be the stained glass panel made to be displayed on a wrought-iron stake. When I first saw this, DH and I laughed and laughed deliriously for hours, and as soon as one of us calmed down, the other would only have to say, "Glass on a stick!" to get the hysteria started again.

    Then we bought a house (partly so that I could have room for a glass workshop in the garage). And the house came with huge garden beds. And I became at least as obsessed with gardening as I am with glass. Sure enough, the inevitable is happening...I am seized with the increasing urge to combine my two great obsessions. I've made both DH and my best friend promise repeatedly to stop me if they catch me putting glass-on-a-stick in my garden, but sadly, both DH and BF ascribe to the "to each his own; I would never tell anyone else what to do in their garden" philosophy of life. So I am this close to making a glass dragonfly-on-a-stick for my new hummingbird bed...

    However, DH and BF have both sworn that they will stop me if they ever catch me buying a concrete goose and dressing it up in little seasonally-appropriate outfits purchased at the local farmer's market (the local fad I hate most). If they let me so much as glance longingly at a concrete goose in a little Pilgrim outfit, they're both out of the will, and no glass-on-a-stick for Christmas for either of them!

  • tropicalfreak
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    people who use those plastic flowers in their landscape need to be fined somehow/someway by the fashion police for tackiness, the gardening police for insulting mother nature, the anti-laziness police for being just lazy, a major reality check, their home isn't part of some fake hollywood set....maybe take all thos that must use those plasctic flowers and start their own town, "plasticville, usa....where everyone is a fake"

    why do they even bother....jeeze

    tropicalfreak

  • gardengirl_sd
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    OMG...this has been highly entertaining and FUNNY!

    I'd take peeing cherubs over my LFF... plastic flowers-seriously tacky and lazy! Just plain WRONG!

    I can't really call this a "fad" cos it's the only one I've ever seen, but it was quite disturbing...a GIANT, life size BROWN BEAR-complete with snarl and white sharp teeth in someone's front yard...thankfully it isn't in my neighborhood, but near the Mexican place I frequent...

    Does anyone have a problem with gnomes? I want one!

  • Boop
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Anybody mention the tree faces? I thought they were kinda cute but definintly wierd! P.S. I have silouttes
    of deer and bear along our property line and a boy and girl that swings from a apple tree. Plastic flowers always look just that! PLASTIC. Everyone should feel free to decorate thier yards anyway they want but if its in the view of others you will be subjected to the critical stares of others. So what! P.S. I love chartruse and purple
    Happy Gardening!
    Boop

  • bghank
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Red mulch and plastic flowers are GREAT choices for least favorite things, but at least they're GARDEN things. But whats with these gazing balls? I've seen one garden with several of them. I thought 'disco' was making a comeback. UGH!

  • ljrmiller
    18 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    My current "least favorite garden fad" is all the garden lighting available. Aren't moonlight and sunlight ENOUGH? I definitely don't like glow-in-the-dark stuff.

    Lisa

  • earthlydelights
    17 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    lol, i thought only the crazy old coot down the road planted plastic flowers. now i can see it's a universal thing.

    maybe this isn't exactly gardening, but what about all those giant blow-up things for every conceivable holiday sitting all over lawns?

    gardengirl - no problem with gnomes here.

  • yard_bard
    17 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Let's see...

    - scalloped concrete edging blocks. (confession: I put them in once, years ago, but promptly removed them after seeing the horrible monster I created).
    - poodled olive trees. (similar to poodled junipers but on a grander scale; definitely a Southern California thing).
    - asparagus fern: vile weed. Not really a fad, I just hate the stuff.
    - river rock borders. EVERY house in my neighborhood has these. It's a water conservation technique where the city I live in mandated a few years ago that a certain percentage of each lawn must be covered with non-lawn materials. I believe I am the first one to buck the trend and replace the rock with more eye-pleasing, natural looking (at least to me) large chunk pine bark.
    - tulips. After they bloom, what's the point? Again, not a fad, just hate them.

  • fivemeows
    17 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I simply hate seeing a old toilet sitting in a garden with flowers planted in it!

  • maozamom NE Ohio
    17 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I just don't understand vinyl fence. Why would a person who wouldn't think of wearing polyester add a plastic fence to their landscape?

  • mmqchdygg
    17 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Garden 'Junk' done so that it doesn't blend with the surroundings. I have seen 'antique' boxes, ladders, planters, metal works, etc in some AWESOME settings- even an outhouse here on GW, and then I have seen these same things just PILED into peoples' yards and it looks like a junkyard. There IS a tactful way to use Garden Junk, but if it looks like 'junk in your yard' when you're done, leave it out.

    Over-use of any/all of the following:
    Plain green hosta
    Boring Variegated Hosta
    The above in any of the following settings: Tree rings, light pole rings, rows along driveways just for 'something to put there.'
    Red mulch in a residential setting. I still hate it in commercial settings, but that's the ONLY place it should be seen.
    Stella D'Oro Daylilies
    Lawn ornaments. Again, done tactfully, and strategically placed, ornaments can enhance a garden. When they just look like they were put there "just for something to put there" they do just the opposite.
    Rural settings made to look suburban. Ie: manicured lawns, geometric landscaping designs...something that belongs on a sloped street in San Francisco rather than in the lovely country setting of which it REALLY is a part.
    CONTAINER GARDENS WHERE THE FLOWERS AREN'T PROPORTIONATE TO THE CONTAINER! (Usually too-small/short flowers in a mongo-tall container.) Ref: a 3/4 filled Whiskey Barrel full of Mums. It just looks ridiculous. Akin to wearing high-water pants.

    Gardens that are too small for the property, or lack of a 'vertical' interest. Ie: Island beds with nothing but annual creeping phlox and pansies.

    Pansies planted on the ground.

    (I need to get off this thread)

  • yarthkin
    17 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Great thread!

    I'd have to say one of my least favorite things (besides lawn art) has got to be plants which appear fake even if they aren't. It could be the Pansies planted blooming in the winter, a randomly place blue hydrangea, unnaturally bright pink flowers, or maybe something that's just too hybridized for its own good. I know it when I see it.

    Frankly it isn't surprising to me that people have turned to plastic plants. It's the natural progression. For years the plants have become more and more unnatural looking. People complain about old-fashioned strains when they come up from seed where they don't want them, or if they grow too quickly, so now everyone goes with plants that can't reproduce at all! The just sit there in the yard, not doing much of anything, while being some radioactively saturated color.

    I can kinda see the conversations that must happen at the nursery: "Do you have any brightly colored plants that don't grow, won't require water and that I don't have to take care of?"

  • bn_here_b4
    17 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    My neighbor has spent lots of time to make her yard pretty. She has several large rose bushes and some other nice shrubs and flowers. Her husband has ringed their yard with used cars, tractors, and riding lawn mowers in various states of disrepair and disassembly.

    The people up the street from them have 2 or 3 teenagers, so they have lots of cars too. While they all run, some of the cars are what you'd call unique fixer uppers.

    A little way from there lives a guy who is fixing up an old Camaro in the yard beside the house, right next to his wife's flowerbeds.

    Since I pass by the area frequently, I'd have to say my least favorite garden addition doesn't stop at the tire, it would have to be the whole car. ;-)

  • katielovesdogs
    17 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Straight rows of red, white and blue annuals with flag accents

    White plastic picket fence with angels on each post==angels are plastic with spinning wings

  • greenthumbgardener
    17 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Thank Goodness that other people feel the same way about those gaudy plastic flowers. It looks like Walt Disney THREW-UP in their yard.

  • PRO
    it'sALLart
    17 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    LOL, that yard must be hilarious, Katylovesdogs. Please tell me the neighborhood!

    my least fave is people who build these large "island" mound gardens in their perfectly flat and featureless yard. Picture a gaint square sea of green grass with no other gardens and this beauty is placed in the very center in a perfect oblong oval shape, about 2 to 3 foot high. Then you plant the tallest sea oats you can find in the middle, ring that with crappy annuals you get at Wal-mart (say, impatiens or perhaps bright purple geraniums) and cover the entire thing with Mars-red mulch and geodes spaced evenly in a border. The only thing missing is the tacky white plastic 1 foot fence. But that may still be installed, time will tell.

    Why not start at the house with your landscaping and work your way out to the yard. Nope, just plop that sucker right there in the middle. And never add on or build up to it with anything else.

    I used to write a gardening column and actually took pictures of one of these to demonstrate my personal "Garden Don'ts".

  • janetpetiole
    17 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Spirea.

    Why this shrub is so popular is beyond me. Once it has finished blooming it looks dirty unless it's sheared. When sheared... you have round orbs. Spirea are planted in nearly ever commerical landscape, in almost all professionally landscaped yards, and the nurseries sell every cultivar available which is perpetuating this overused shrub. I'll take a stella over a spirea any day.

  • debraq
    17 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I hate those grey gravel rocks people use to fill in the sides of the driveway because they are too lazy to plant something, and "well, the gravel just fills it up".
    When I first moved here, I removed ALL of the gravel by hand. I was just learning to garden, and was looking for all available space. I didn't have many garden tools except my hands and a trowel. It took me over three years to get them all out and now its a gorgeous 20 X 3 ft perennial garden bed. But to this day, 12 years later, I'm still finding the occasional stupid piece of gravel when I put in a new plant!

  • Judy Lodin
    17 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Not sure if this was mentioned in a previous post, but I am not an admirer of plastic anything....plastic lawn chairs, plastic statuary (such as flamingos), plastic trellises or arbors---and especially plastic hanging pots that you get at the nursery. The white ones are especially hideous. When folks hang these in their yards, all I notice is the pot, not the plant. Naturally, the plastic flowers give off really bad vibes as well, and lots of posters have mentioned those!

  • ohgirl
    16 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    My My My....ump..ump....ump...Things have truly changed since this thread started way back in 2003.Its almost Christmas 2007! And as always, i'll be glad when its over!
    This is an old thread that needs reviving! Ive read some funny stuff on here people!
    Well 1st off...I got along row of RED silk poinsettas going up the driveway! They really brighten the area up for the holidays!! And when it snows, that red color just POPS!! and its just gorgeous!
    I also make planters out of the tires with the rims on them! I love these! They never wear out! I paint the tires one color and the rim another after i flip it inside-out. Then i can paint flowers or designs on them! Sometimes i make them pschedelic! I have medium to large tire planters! When you put impatiens in them in the shade in a circle...they look like big old puff balls when they grow out!!!" Sort of like Aretha Franklin. Smile;-)
    Oh yea I have those plastic flowers.Iam guilty.But....when i see the color fading out,i will replace them the following year.I dont want my yard to look tacky! I like them in there to give some areas that need filling in,some pow!!!, till summer gets here.
    OH!OH! I have a circle flower bed in the middle of my front yard!Its so pretty in the spring,summer and fall with the beautiful varieties of flowers growing in there.
    I....Got...Red...Mulch...Too!!! Now i love that stuff...Thinkin' about gettin some of that stuff you spray on the mulch.Some kinda red color stuff for the mulch. So that after winter when the color fades out....... i can spruce it up!
    OK What else....Oh Yea!!! I dont have nothing against plastic fences. I have several kinds myself actually!
    I do have some fairy and kids statues.And what that other person said is true...."They do look like children of the corn!" Now i look at them differently.
    Moving on....I dont want nothing that looks old in my yard! I dont like that crackle stuff....nor do i want something that looks like its been out there on a farm for 50years!!
    No sir...not for me! I grew up poor! I want new stuff!!!If anything, i want to get it new,and let it grow old with ME!!!And copper piping turning green and suppose to look QUAINT? FORGET IT!!lOOKS LIKE JUNK TO ME!!!!
    I also have a scalloped bricked retaining wall around my front yard! It looks real good!
    I also paint my garbage cans with flowers! Because if i dont, my old man neighbor next door will take it, and act as though he didnt realize he took my good expensive garbage can AGAIN!!!!!
    And this is my home.
    OK, now.....,Since this thread is about Least favorite garden fad, im going to give it to you straight!!!!
    Those gnomes su#k! Maybe if you was in Ireland or scotland somewhere!out in the country where its all quaint and pretty! Not here. Not in the USA! Those things look like Chuckys relatives! You know iam right! If you think they are cute you might have 666 on your forehead!
    What else....Oh Yea!!!!!
    Those stupid stupid stupid deer on the grass out in front of a house,,,,,across the street from KROGER or a GAS STATION!!!!!Come on people!!!They look incredibly FAKEEEEEEE!!!!!!!
    So there....Thankyou VERY MUCHHHHH! Have a great Christmas and an extroardinary NewYear!!!!......Ohgirl

  • cannedam
    15 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    MOST HATED GARDEN TREND: OUTDOOR ROOMS!!!! This is just so ridiculous and against nature it nauseates me. Let's have a living room outside. Let's have a bedroom outside. Let's have a shower outside. For pete's sake...it's the OUTSIDE not the INSIDE. That's the charm of it. Don't build rooms in your backyards. THey're stupid.

    Also hate: Perfect lawns with perfect hedges all around. Ick.
    and those damn glass totems. Man, I would be so angry if I inherited all that crap from one of my loved ones. Build things with form AND function. Collecting crap is collecting crap -- even if you do glue it all together and stick it in your yard. I'd hate to live next to a yard full of that stuff, too.

    Bowling balls all over the place...again no function, no use. What the hell? Collecting is collecting. And filling your yard with crap is filling your yard with crap.

    I love recycling stuff but going and collecting a bunch of useless crap in order to recycle it is kind of dumb.

    But outdoor rooms are stoopid.

  • verdant_croft
    15 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I pop on now and again and pick the threads with the most responses to read...I figure if they interest that many people, they'll interest me, too. Well, this one did not disappoint. Mostly, it was hilarious!

    FWIW, I 100th the notion (I think maybe two or three people disagreed) that the kitsch in the garden is absolutely disgusting. I went to a co-worker's house because she wanted to spend the afternoon making "stones," whatever those were. I drove up...in the flower bed, out front and boldly forward, were two, three-foot-long plastic alligators.

    HUH???

    Turned out "stones" were more kitsch...cement poured into molds and painted whatever ghastly color you deemed "cute." (I never got invited back again. Our choices in paint colors, what to "decorate" the "stones" with, etc. were just too different. The alligators, too, it turned out, were deliberate, as were a number of other choice pieces, including flamingos.)

    Later I moved to a nice, new-to-me old home. My neighbor...is into movie kitsch. Bright pink disney-esque caterpillars. Cinderella type female figures. Pinks and purples and baby blues and lime-greens - cartoon character colors - on plastic and ceramic child's toy-sized "ornaments," liberally distributed in the flower beds (and in their case, everywhere else in the yard, too). And a melted-wax looking plastic fountain. Oh yeah, and the homemade deer sillouhettes, four feet tall, propped up in the front lawn. They also are painted, albeit in "natural" colors, like cartoon characters, a fact not lost despite their generous coating of pine tree debris and dirt from the hard rains we've had.

    Sure am glad for the four foot chain link fence separating us. Someday I'm going to have to go for those junipers...they get about eight feet high, don't they?

    Is this where we wax elequent about how we WANT a yard to look?

    Verdant Croft

  • lilagood
    15 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Wow......too many to mention....but I'm gonna' have to go with what I have surrounding me in my neighbor's yards. On the one side of me I have a neighbor who has the wooden wishing well, just recently stained a mildewy like color with no life planted around it. But that's just the beginning, she has an outhouse, and too many gnomes and fairies and dogs and hanging things to mention.....very little flower and plant life.....it's so tacky and ridiculous! Then directly across the street from me I have a new neighbor who has just landscaped her whole property with freaking topiaries! Don't get me wrong, I have a few of them....they are pretty when they accent your landscaping...but too much of ANYTHING is NOT good! They must have 14-16 of them just visible from the front yard, and it's not a big yard! And on TOP of that they have the white gravel all along the road in their "beds" with pavers, it's all just SO UNnatural....And speaking of UNnatural, their hanging baskets on their front porch have fake flowers in them. (I know this not because I've ever gotten close enough to look or feel, but because since they were first hung last year, they haven't changed shape, size, or color since!) I HATE fake plants/flowers outside. And out of the topiaries that I mentioned, that did NOT include the 6 FAKE ones that flank their garage door and on their porch/porch steps. I think they think it makes them look "rich", with the cost of those things, ya' know? Oh, and they have all the flood lights to highlight it all too.....yuck! Anyway, these people are people who will hand wash their vehicle outside at 10P in 20degree Farenheit weather,trim the grass along the edge of their property and the roadside with scissors, STAIN half of their telephone pole!, and "pretend" (ya' know, act like they don't see you, and fake like they're getting a call on their cell phone? or wait until you are about an inch away from their physical body and you've said something to them first before they look up and acknowledge you) like they don't see you if you try to approach them and walk away from you... I think they are just SO engrossed in their IMAGE as opposed to having people getting to know them, so really, their landscaping theme matches their personalities, snotty and fake! No one can get close enough to them to advise them on how ridiculous it looks...Oh and ALSO!........hanging inside wall decor such as medallions and such on the outside of your house! OMG, what next? Whew! I feel better now! I've been wanting to vent about all that CRAP that I have to look at for a while now.....Oh...and I HATE the red mulch too! My neighbor on the other side of me uses that, it matches her shutters, but I like her, she'll talk to you.

  • lilagood
    15 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Sorry if I sounded a little bitter with my previous post.....can't help it....I am the beholder and they are my eyes........I forgot to mention FAKE rocks ...WHY USE FAKE? ANYTHING FAKE gets my goat. And I forgot to mention the seasonal changing of the flags...a flag is a flag is a flag is a flag is a flag.............too much, just tooooooooo much.....

  • alpiner
    15 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I'd rather see any of the 'stuff' in the above postings rather than one more boring green lawn. "Oh look, what a nice lawn...that makes #912 on this street". ANYTHING is more interesting and less boring than the biggest blight on the planet...the perfect lawn.

  • grinchis40
    15 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I really hate the 'real' rocks (large boulders really) that people just plop down in their yard for that 'natural' look. Boulders don't look like that in nature people! Dig a hole and settle it in. Plants grasses and plants around it. Geez!

  • busy-girl
    15 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    flowerbeds outlined in little rocks....or even painted rocks... hate them!!

  • woodside
    14 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    A neighbor down the street has a smaller home with a 100 foot pine tree in the small front yard shading the entire lot. Attached to the base of this tree in all that darkness is a gleaming white wrought iron two seater bench.

    It's chained to the tree.

    Chained??!! First of all, who is sitting in that cold full shade to look at that sparse grass? Second of all, who is going to drag a heavy arsed wrought iron bench off their property and down the street??? This is an established neighborhood- don't you trust your neighbors?

    I secretly want to cut off the chain, take it, and and leave the bench just to demonstrate their ridiculousness.

    Outrageous!!!

  • anita
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    concrete curb-edged island bed in the center of the lawn. It's not that it looks so bad, but EVERYBODY, EVERYBODY, EVERYBODY does this! Show some originality, people!

  • anita
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I forgot-

    I also hate LOLLIPOP TREES. People take a tree that wants to be big (like, say, a Catalpa), and prune it down to a little ball-on-a-stick. Why not just plant a dwarf?

  • mirendajean (Ireland)
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I loathe seeing one dwarf tree in the centre of a lawn. Why? It looks so lonely.

  • homegroan
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Gazing balls and gnomes. The only thing worse than either of them is a yard full of trash that looks like a garden rummage sale. EW

    A life size T-Rex with a deer dangling from its mouth would absolutely ROCK. I doubt the neighbors would agree. :(

  • flyingsqurrial
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    the indoor garden area: The saddest looking Umbrella plant that has ten-year so no one trims it and no one moves it outside in summer.

  • flyingsqurrial
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    the indoor garden area: The saddest looking Umbrella plant that has ten-year so no one trims it and no one moves it outside in summer.

  • mguthrie10
    8 years ago

    One road up from me (3 homes very expensive and the rest modest) there are THREE with a commode in the yard filled with artificial flowers - and one has a pink flamingo beside it. On the other end of the road a lady bought one of the old homes from 1900's and fixed it up. It was looking good - until she painted it barn red, put a white fence across the top half of the yard and proceeded to put everything she can drag home between that fence and the road. She has old porch columns, bird baths, gnomes, chairs, old bicycles, junk - you name it. There must be at least 50 pieces of something in an area about 80 feet wide and 5 feet deep. It is a pity because she works so hard to keep the weeds out and keep it mulched. It looks like a junk yard and the house color is very harsh. Pity...

  • gardeninglife
    8 years ago

    Am I the only one who hates people and people that have no sense that mass plant annuals of the same type (like petunias) in a planter or next to their house. Even the city landscapers do this!

  • garyfla_gw
    8 years ago

    Hi

    WOW what a bunch of negative lol I always thought gardens to be what the owner considered beautiful That's my theory lol A recent discussion of "Worlds takiest garden ornament" produced many replies Award went to a 25 foot inflatable ,purple gorilla!! have no idea where you get those though I did find 15 foot tall plastic palms with changeable solar lights!! Imagine a grove of those??!!!

    My vote went to pink plastic flamingoes but was pointed out to me that sales have topped 30 million worldwide !! lol

    My neighbor added sunglasses and bermuda shorts to theirs!! Was blown away changed my entire definition of tacky!!! lol

    BTW Love purple plants !!! lol gary

  • gardendaydreamer
    8 years ago
    last modified: 8 years ago

    omg this thread is too funny!! Glad it got bumped up

    I am so very sad to admit my pet peeve is in my own property right now: tropical plants/palm trees in non-tropical/country areas, especially the plastic ones that light up. we had an ugly air conditioner that can be seen from the street, so we were looking for a plant to hide it. VERY FOOLISHLY I picked up a fake plastic tropical plant off the curb(I have no idea what I was thinking). the next day I came to my senses but too late---my husband loves it. damn! I cringe every time I pull in the driveway!!!

    and ditto on red mulch. I almost got a divorce over the red mulch issue!

  • ubro
    8 years ago

    My pet peeves are-- garden arches that lead no where, stuck out in the open with vines up them. Bridges that span nothing, just put out as lawn ornaments. Oh, and the purple/lime green combo has go to go.

  • PRO
    Ancient Surfaces
    8 years ago

    Have you considered adding a timeless and classical Limestone Fountain in your yard?

    It will never go out of style or look out of place no matter how many design changes you decide to undertake in your backyard or front yard as years role by.



    http://www.ancientsurfaces.com/Antique-Pool-Fountains.html

  • tsugajunkie z5 SE WI ♱
    8 years ago

    My gardening peeve is people coming on forums to spam them.

    tj

  • HalloBlondie-zone5a
    8 years ago

    Saw this very old post and had to read it. It's amazing that more than a decade has gone by and many of these items are still a massive pet peeve of mine and still regarded as faux pas. I absolutely hate red mulch, white gravel. The tacky plastic items are gross. Mini fences make no sense to me. Why not just plant a row of 6-12 inch growing flowers or plants. Not a big fan of people using wheelbarrows (other found objects) as a flowerpot. Too each their own, but I am always drawn to the classy/formal looking gardens. Lots of plants, but within a colour scheme or proportionate to each other in that the forms of things complement versus distract or compete against each other. Sometimes less is more. Another pet peeve of mine is over planting and it looking like a hot mess.

  • ubro
    8 years ago

    This is a fun thread, and each to his own thats for sure :)

    Give me a cottage garden that invites you to enter, explore, and wander at will. One that includes rusted iron sculpture, old worn stone and a rickety gate. A place you can breath in the beauty and see each plant grow as it is supposed to, spilling over the edges in sweet abandon, mixing with it's neighbour in happy companionship.


    One of my peeves is to much formality in a garden. For me, these gardens lack warmth, comfort, and seems to ooze tension. I always feel on edge, like I am visiting a rich aunt who would frown upon me if I so much as stepped off the path. lol. We all cannot like the same things or life itself would be a bore.

  • bghank
    8 years ago

    I think that gardens should reflect the gardener's tastes and personality. So nit-picking on one or more facets of a garden is like saying "I don't like that your favorite color is blue". But if I must choose something that bothers me, it would be how fads (probably market driven) in plants and flowers make gardens look so similar. One year red daylilies are in and suddenly, they're everywhere. The next season it will be a different plant.

  • HalloBlondie-zone5a
    8 years ago

    I did notice that the majority of the comments were not about the actual flowers, plants, shrubs or trees? It was more about all the extra materials or items that people added in or around. I think the majority of gardeners appreciate all types of plants, even if it is not to their taste or style. For example, I like the look of a country/prairie meadow garden. With lots of flowers & colour. However, it does not fit my house style. Nor do I have the space for such a grand plan.

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