And, worst of all is all these points are so convicingly demonstrated as "professional" on HGTV......

I'd add that another err is putting too many plants in a design rather than adding a few more of say, 4 species for impact, rather than having one or two of 10 species all over. Gardeners who are learning landscaping really have this problem.

I recall on trips of gardens in the Brandywine Valley of PA, a discussion started once how you can tell a landscaper's backyard garden (and his envisionary design) from a gardener's backyard garden--the landscaper has flowing masses of a favorite plant, whereas a gardener has favorite plants most often tucked in all over.

Hello Jambu:

Good points and nice to see you come in . . . I'm outnumbered by all of these snowbound gardeners!! Please stay a while.

spectre

Well my front yard has about all the design errors that can fit on it. The yard is completely surrounded by trees and shrubs. Stinky ornamental pears, meatball photinas, and indian hawthorn are just a few of the "overused" institutional plantings that make up my "Fort Apache-Knox". And I'll be damned if I am going to open up my yard to the view of the salmon stucco apartment building across the street! The more a place looks unapproachable the better when living in the barrio.
That said, I have a few hedged ornamental pears inside the yard boundry too. The "landscaper" did it. Now I- at 48 -am going to climb those trees and lace them. Planning for my winter years uh huh. I'll be lucky if I have a place to live at 65.
I also have a tree everyone loves to hate- a Ficus . It's planted close to the house and under power lines. It is the kind that uproots the white concrete and brick hardscape paths. I think it looks cool- the uprooted hardscape that is.
But you know what? All these mistakes were here when I bought the place. If I were wealthy I wouldn't live here. I think I'll have just enough money in the budget to get the Ficus cut down. Of course I'm going to leave the stump and the HUGE above ground roots. Maybe I'll plant a Rose Apple near the stump so I can shear the wide canopy to fit.
Am I bad?

Sounds good to me. Especially like the upturned concrete and bricks. I remember reading or hearing some time ago that if there were some kind or disease that wiped out the East Coast, leaving no human inhabitants, it would take a matter of years for plant life and succession to topple skyscrapers and break up milllions(billions)of square yards of concrete and black top . . . interesting visual

Well, this was a useful thread.
I am driving around this winter noticing a lot of the structural design put in place by gardeners and commercial designers. There is a lot to observe and learn.
What I see a lot of that I hate is red volcano rock as a mulch at businesses and some kind of short nandina that is blood red (is this firepower? hate it)--everywhere. This, with the winter hay-colored perfectly edged lawn (which is otherwise kind of nice) just looks ugly.

Also, I see that many, many homes have felt compelled to line the edge of their property with thujas, a line of 40'+ evergreens on the edge of a 100'x 60'plot with a ranch house --this looks ridiculous.
Rose

So Cal-you're not bad--you are just an example of "when bad landscaping happens to good people"--PO's must shoulder the blame! Just do a little at a time--and learn to love the meatballness of the photinia. EMBRACE the meatballness. Particularly if it's screening something ugly--I have a stand of privet that I plan to tackle this spring--but only if I can figure out a way of screening NEXT DOOR...which is why the privet is still there.

melanie

Well, I'm new to this board and simply can't pass up this chance to rant a little about the aweful things people do in their gardens... People do the most absurd things in their gardens, things that they would never do in their houses, many of these things are verging on outright madness!

1. Ugly mechanical items in the garden, power boxes, satellite dishes, air conditioner coils, external plumbing pipes and other big ugly things that people seem to stick right on the front of their house as if proud of them. I have seen lovely old edwardian houses with a massive PVC toilet drain pipe run down the front of the house just inches from the front door! Why do they do this outside as if the rules change the moment you step past the front door, would they fit a fuse box in the middle of the dining room over the fireplace? A toilet drain in the bedroom where it passes by the bed? I really hope not...

2. Aimless arches. Why do people buy those rose arches and abandon them in the middle of the lawn or large open spaces. Arches are the garden version of a door. Would they build a house with a door floating for no aparent reason in the middle of the living room? They'd probably laugh at the notion, but is it really different?

3. Trellis without vines. At least here in the UK, there's a strange habit where people stick trellis to walls and never grow anything up it. I have seen houses with trellis mounted 5 foot up the house wall which is over solid concrete paving where nothing could grow... My neighbour did this to her house 5 years or more ago and hasn't ever tried to grow anything up it. The kind of people who do this are usually afflicted with "aimless arch syndrome" and never grow anything up their abandoned arch either.

4. Plastic garden ornaments. If they wouldn't have a hollow plastic toad in the bathroom or a faux-granite bench in the hall, why allow it in the garden?

5. Plastic rocks. I know I covered the plastic ornaments above, but this variety of insanity requires it's own mention. People will spend £40 on a big hollow plastic rock that's going to fade horribly and grow mildew, and yet we live on a big lump of rock called plannet earth and the real thing is not just plentiful, it also gains character as it ages and won't blow away next time there's a storm.

6. Plants with drab ugly leaves/shape and pretty flowers that last about 4 weeks. They have to live with it in the garden 365 days a year, choosing something with just a few weeks of beauty is like keeping the Christmass tree up all year long and only decorating it for a month of that year. Again, would they do it in the house?

7. Bizare and disturbingly pedantic flower placement. I know this is a personal choice, but surely I'm not the only one who finds colour cordinated flowers in patterns that seem to have been layed out with a set square rather grim? I've seen gardens that have perfect rows of each colour flower lined up with perfectly even spacing between them. My garden would be hell for them, I mean things have naturalised over the years, some bulb plantings aren't even symetrical, and a few plants have spralled together! They must rip everything out each year and start again to get such precise placement of plants. Well, I guess they have to, when you're that anally retentive you can't walk past a herbaceous border without sucking up the first 2 foot of top soil.

Bry

BTW, I probably sound rather scathing. Well, this is a good day, I decided to avoid the topic of raised planters that look disturbingly like coffins and gravel that is so badly installed it migrates fifteen foot down the road... Oh, and the fancy garden pond fountain-pumps that light up and spray water like a hydrotherapy massage shower crossed with a swamp.

Bry, that was great, I hope you visit more often. Doesn't it feel great to let off steam!!!!!

Oh, the abandoned arches and unused trellises. Good ones, Bryan! Along the same thought are the "wishing wells" and foot bridges that get plopped in the middle of a lawn. Especially the latter -- which usually lead to nowhere and ford nothing.

Bry-
Welcome, Bry! Funny post! Good to see the Brits do as many foolish things in the garden as we do. Especially like the notion of water feature fountains being described as "hydrotherapy massage shower crossed with a swamp".

I am often put in mind of miniature golf course waterfalls when I see a 15' waterfall in the middle of a flat yard. Very popular up here in NH.

Hope we hear from you again.

Ginger

An error I've run across on some nice 1920s properties--building a substantial garage right behind the house on long narrow lots. The first owners might have liked it, but present owners are begging to get a clear line-of-sight.

Rock piled any old place for no particular reason, and then just set on the surface.

Stockade fences--almost always recent additions to obscure the spreading backyard views that have been in place since the neighborhoods were built in the 1920s. Replacing the wide-spreading community lawn that ran the length of the block with a series of mini-fortresses.

English ivy--over and over and over and over again.

david7a--I couldn't agree with you more. When we fenced in our back and side yard at our former residence, (I was the pregnant mother of a VERY active toddler on a busy road) I planned the fence so that it wouldn't interrupt the "block long lawn" in the FRONT of the house. I also made sure my fence was "friendly" looking--4 ft high picket. High enough to contain the kids, not so high that you couldn't lean over it too talk. I think those privacy fences say more about the state of our Nation than pretty much anything else...

melanie

the yuppie next door was going to put up his privacy fence all around his yard, messing with my great-granmother's 7 sisters rose i had started from twigs. i basically told him "touch it and die" (with a smile on my face of course) they didn't enclose their entire yard, but they did block my vista to the parkway, and now i have a 6' tall wood privacy fence on one side of my attempt at a japanese garden. still pondering what to do with that fence. if you want privacy, don't move next door to a large 4 bedroom house with swingsets, sand box, bikes and 2 basketball goals........

sigh. momcat--wish you were MY neighbor. You could teach me to use powertools--and we would have fun. And I PROMISE I wouldn't put up a "privacy"fence. Does anyone else remember when they were called "spite" fences?

melanie

I just have to jump in here...I have several of the design errors going on in my front yard, just when I thought I was heading in the right direction the neighbors decide to develope, starting in their FRONT yard, builing a townhome, putting a road between our houses, other than a fence between our front side yard and their acess road Iam stuck on what to do.....we also have a drainage ditch between us and the road, cant fill it in, thinking about lining it with flat rocks to make a sort of dry creek bed look...any ideas. I like the cottage garden look, have lots of colors. thanks, toothfairy

Hi Melanie.

Wish I had a solid 8 ft. high fence along my western border of the backyard, not just a spite fence. Zoning will not allow such a barricade....(((((((sigh)))))))))

We have a chain link fence which actually is six inches off the property line (on our side) giving the evil, evil neighbor 6 inches more.

Last year they sprayed Roundup on OUR side of the fence killing my Grandmother's rose bush, an azaelia, my Father's Concord grapevine, maltese cross, Missouri Primrose, daylilies, iris, rose of sharon. There is a thread with more detail of the carnage in the rose forum, Neighbor Killed Grandmother's rose.

I put up a split cane fence along some of the fenceline. In spring we get to restore, or try to, the destruction done.

I can't replace my deceased Grandmother's 40+ year old rose bush. I cannot replace a grape that my deceased Father planted ages ago either. I cannot replace a gift of a daylily given to us by a now deceased neighbor in the 60s. I may be able to get the same kind of plant but it won't be the same.

Our design error was planting things within reach of the evil, evil people!

Oh, Chickadee--I am so sorry. They ARE evil, evil people. And sometiems, yes, it IS neccessary to screen such people out. I have a dear friend with an overly-dense town-home development going in behind her house--she put up the same kind of fence--with good cause. I didn't mean there was NEVER a good reason for a spite fence--just that I think they are over used.

I realize that nothing can REPLACE such plants--but did you at least get SOME compensation? Really, one is liable if one oversprays that way. Did you document the destruction?

Perhaps the rose isn't REALLY dead? or the grape for that matter--if the rose is growing on it's own rootstock it may come back. Ditto the grape...

sending hope filled thoughts for new growth in the spring!

melanie

Toothfairy-
Make your post stand alone on the forum so others can respond who are not reading the entire thread on Common Design errors-you'll get lots of responses that way!
G.

Toothfairy,
Ginger's right. Why not create a new thread topic and let the experts post some suggestions? Your message will get lost in the crowd here!

Thanks Melanie.

I don't know too many things but I can recognise DEAD, and those plants are dead since spring 2003. No sign of life. In fact, the land was barren 18 inches on our side of the fence. Not even a deadly nightshade or thistle was to be found.

I could understand if a bit of spray drift damaged some plants near the fence but not this. Not complete extermination of many plants.

Of course the neighbor claims no knowledge of any spraying.
(Yeah.....right.) I find it best to avoid any contact with this toxic person in future.

I hope this is NOT a common occurance. It's not really a design error until the toxic people moved next door.

Well, we shall hope they move. I will perform the "sacrificial-nekkid-chicken-dance" by the light of the next full moon--perhaps others will join me? And we shall see--they best NOT mess with the GW friends of Miss Chick-A-Dee-Dee!

melanie

I am gazing my Evil Eye in their general direction.
Seriously, though, Chicka, I'm sorry for your loss. Whenever I read about a house being burned down, there is often a mention about the family either losing or - happily - rescuing its photo albums. "I don't know what I would have done if I'd lost all my pictures... I can always get a new sofa, but not photos of my grandmother."

Plants that were gifts from loved ones are every bit as precious as family photo albums and the memories they contain. I feel for you in your loss of those plants. I hope the memories of the joy in receiving them will live on.

Thanks for the advice..........toothfairy

LOL!!!!

Thank you for the sympathy for my loss.

The fence isn't a "spite fence", it is a form of protection from future attacks. I was wrong about the type of fence I put up. It actually is a willow screen, not a split cane.
I wanted something that looked nice but would offer some protection. I attached it to the chain link fence so the screen will extend two feet higher than the top rail of the four foot fence. It also extends down to two inches above ground level to decrease the chances of the fence decomposing too quickly.

Also, since there is that 2" gap at the ground level, I mounded soil to a height of 5 inches in front of this gap. My theory is should the toxic people persist and try to spray under the willow screen, they will spray the soil mound and plants on the other side of my fortress will be saved and there will be much rejoicing.

(Sorry that my postings got away from the original subject.)

Chickadeedeedee, I couldn't find your post on the rose forum with my search. Could you post a link? Thanks. Sorry it happened.

Hi.

Again, thanks for the sympathy.

Here is the whole gruesome story. (At least the part that can be printed in the forum.)

Here is a link that might be useful: Neighbor Killed Grandmother's Rose

Hi Toothfairy.

If the ditch is on your property, you probably should check wiith zoning in your area first before investing in new design. You may also want to check if the neighbors and / or city are going to be doing anything in the near future with the ditch. It would be heartbreaking if you fixed the area up really nicely and then they dredged it and laid pipe or filled in the site later.

I had the same problem, sort of, with the evil, evil people mentioned above. The ditch was on their side so I could do nothing about it. I planted a flower border to block the view of the ditch.It is 3 ft. wide and runs 90 ft. long.
I have alternating plantings of Coreopsis 'Moonbeam' and a perennial blue salvia. Butterflies and honeybees love it.

A dry river bed sounds very nice. I have a pseudo-replication of the same in the backyard. I first lined the area with heavy landscape fabric and hauled in tons of river pebbles. This expanse stretches about 50 ft. along the eastern border of our yard. As this area is prone to some flooding, there are iris and daylilies along the sometimes dry bed.

You all have me worried since the property next to me is probably going up for sale, and we have a wire fence in between us.

Can I please go off-topic in relation to Bry's post? I'll try not to do it often.

Bry, at least here in America, people do the same tacky things to the inside of their homes as they do to the outside. I have been a big fan of older houses (75+ and much older) for a long time. I used to post often at www.oldhousejournal.com. There was post there quite a while back about a couple who were looking to buy an older house, and the oddest house they looked at was one where the previous owners installed two side-by-side toilets in the LIVING ROOM on a hardwood floor. Both toilets were fully functional. Can anyone fathom that?

The couple didn't buy the 100+ year old house. People who do crazy things outside, do them inside as well....Back to Common Design Errors now...

Reminds me of a Maine farmhouse where the toilet was installed behind the huge, cast iron wood-fired kitchen stove. Practical, as New Englanders are, that was the warmest place in the house. What better place for your morning...er...constitutional?

Oops. Now I'm off-topic, too! Apologies.

Cady:

Perhaps that's where the phrase, "sorry to eat and run" came from? Ooooopps, off topic again, darn.

spectre

Thank you for the advice about the ditch, we know that it will not be filled in, and in the heaviest rainy weather it has about 4 inches of water in it so the rocks lining it might also help the drainage and keep it from looking like a big muddy ditch. Thanks again, cant wait to get out there and redesign my front yard avoinding some of the commom design errors mentioned above. toothfairy

Thank you everyone for the welcome!

Chickadeedeedee, I read your post about the neighbours, and I do know to a smaller extent how you feel. I didn't lose such nice plants, but the same thing happened to me some years ago. You do have options for screening them out to some extent. Zoning may allow a lower wall/fence that can be extended a couple of foot with trellis on the top. Also, ivy will resist almost any weed killer they may put on it, so this is a good plant for the area if you suspect it may happen again. Also, it's cheap and fast growing, so if they do mannage to dammage it you won't have lost anything really special.

Redthistle, I've seen and heard some crazy stuff over the years, but the idea of a toilet in the lounge is the best yet, particuarly TWO of them side by side! What they did with those things is anyone's guess, and how they weren't embarrased when company came over, or just asking the plumber to fit them is even more curious?

As for design errors, I'd like to add a couple more...

Planting anything that needs overwintering. I know this might not bother some people, but I don't see the average gardener digging up bulbs every season to protect them. I doubt they will remember them or even where they are when winter comes around.

Planting too much of the same colour. Just as some people take an interior colour scheme too far, I have also seen many gardens where all the flowers are the same colour or just two or three harmonising shades like pink and purple. Contrast is so much more exciting and visually appealing.

Using too many contrasting materials. I know that I just said contrast is good, but there's a dividing line between contrast and a wide range of mismatched materials. You can't team up smooth polished grey stone floor tiles with pink granite chippings, wood bark mulch and corse sawn timber benches in the same small area. While we all know the materials didn't come there naturally, there should be a certain pretence in even the most contrived of gardens that nature played a part in their creation and that all the materials could be natural to the area. Similar colors/textures are enough to tie it all in together. Even in an ultra modern garden there should be some attempt to make something (even if it's faux lunar rocks) seem like part of the 'natural' landscape.

Bry...
Know how I could transplant some poison ivy? (just kidding!)
********************************************************

Another error would be putting in a patio with cement or concrete that will cover a large amount of the root system from surrounding trees. The roots will be cut off from their main water supply and much of the tree / trees may die or die back.

Happened to me. :-(

PINK PLASTIC FLAMINGOS

First of all a caveat -- I am still learning. Any of the design errors I have not yet made I probobly will make. I just hope I make them with sufficient vigor that they will be interesting mistakes.

But, to ape a cliche, there are no cliche plants, only cliche gardeners. If people garden out of what they feel (you know that feel, -- when in the middle of weeding and a breeze touches you and you look up and you dont just see the garden but you feel it around you and also in you, so that you are really seeing the garden, not just observing it; you are part of what you see,)they will make mistakes, they will be constantly tinkering with the design, but it will never be vulgar. It will never be the horticultural equivilent of processed cheese(whethe ofr the low or high class types, or of the old fashioned or trendy varities) and as such will usually have enough beauty somewhere within it to be forgiven whatever mistakes it has made.

Good design is much like honesty or sincerity, or for that matter, like good craftmanship. You have to be honest about what you(not your neighbor, not your favorite garden porn)find beautiful and do what you can to make as much of it as wonderfully as you can.

Anything else is bad design.

Springcherry

Well put, Springcherry. I am in agreement.

P. Allen Smith and the like are garden porn.

Pink flamingos design errors?!!! Please don't tell my two pink flamingos, 'Tongue' and 'Cheek' that.

Plastic flamingoes have become a Kitsch Design Statement (KDS) by individuals who are fully aware that such things are tacky, and use them intentionally as a joke. Like BoTann does.

So, they are only a design error if someone uses them in the innocent belief that they lend a touch of the "natural" (along with resin bunnies, plaster deer, etc.) to the garden.

Long live Pink Plastic Flamingoes! Born in Leominster, Mass.

Yeah, but they have been so overdone as a backlash statement against tackiness that they have become tired out in the realm of KDS joke too, IMHO. I do like Asha's reference, 'tho', to the fence made of pink flamingoes, beak to tail, as he put it!

Any garden that is created in the image of another garden-I believe each garden should be a statement of its own.We are all trying to recreate our own versions of Eden.Variety is the spice of life.We can exchange plant material and ideals reguarding hardscapes-but the ultamant results should reflect our own style preferances and be uniquely our own,I find it difficult to swallow plagratism in gardens as in literture.I abhor neighhoods where the house color and landscaping are dictated by a board,and each yard as well as each house is replicated again and again.Adds to the sheepal affect.Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.Thats why we moved from California to a small country community in Arkansas a dozen years ago.We have 14 acreas we are trying to create gardens in-and I dont want to follow one disapline only-I want a cottage garden and a Japanese style garden and cactus and susculent garden and even a tropical garden-a few palms do grow in Arkansas,I want a primative camp ground-for the kids and their ,and our friends-While most of my plans are informal-I would enjoy at least one formal area -for the experience of doing and feeling formal.We have spent the past 12 years beating back briars and honeysuckle and starting many starter beds +starting some of our hard scaping-may never finish it all ,but hope to create my own version of a variety of gardens on every inch of it.I think folks should just do their own thing and design what pleases themselves and yes I have 2 of the pink birds also.

As a NH native now relocated to the Western Reserve area of Ohio, both places full of many old and beautiful houses, what unfailingly makes me cringe as I drive down the road and look at other people's landscaping designs is enormous clumps of ornamental grass in close proximity to a pre-Civil War era home. The scale is all wrong and I think neither the structure nor the plant material are complemented by the juxtaposition. In other words, it just looks yucky. Just my opinion, of course...

Cindy

Hey, Cindy--I concur. I lived in Hudson when I was a teen--and my mother still lives there. It just looks WRONG. OTOH--there is a row of ancient lilacs on the campus of Western Reserve Academy (where my little sis went to HS)that is just exactly right--and is amazing when it blooms.

melanie

I usually am a country mile behind the world, no surprise I came across this thread too late-
BUT, the thing I really hate-which really aren't design errors-are driveways. I HATE THEM. They ruin everything. I want to rip mine out! I love crappy dirt road driveways. I even like them when they have the 2 narrow cement thingys that the wheels drive on. I know it would be hard to shovel,plow,etc.bare feet. I don't care.
My other problem is buckets of "fall-color" mums on everyones door steps in fall. Not really a design problem either.
Oh well, thanks.

Actually, strip drives are my favorite as well. ALSO I think they may come back into fashion--much greater permeability, doncha know. We have a smallish DW that is gravel--and in DESPERATE need of a new LOAD of gravel. My ultimate fantasy involves turflock INSTEAD fo gravel. Someday!

melanie

i read somewhere that those "strip" driveways are called "hollywood" driveways. we had one orginally, but since it was hard to bounce a basketball on (!), it was covered with blacktop (i was out voted). i can't wait for the day i can tear that blacktop out...........

Well, a strip driveway would be good. A crappy dirt driveway SUCKS (used to be granite, but it washes away too easy)! talk about mud! Just a little bit of rain, and we can't get the motorcycle out, and the truck has to be in 4 wheel drive. Amazingly, my nissan has never had a problem (darn! can't use that excuse at work!). We only have ice about once every 2-3 years, so that's not a problem. But the mud really really sucks. All winter, i have gobs of mud stuck to my nissan, that drop off occassionally, scaring me half to death thinking my car is losing parts (which is possible, given its age). And heaven help anyone behind me, when i pull out. I'm like an 18 wheeler throwing mud around. 'Course, it discourages tail-gaters, for a little ways.

My problem is BF wants to pave the driveway w/ asphalt. Talk about ugly! We have to re-do the roof tho, so i've got some time on that one.

This is a great thread ... I'm having so much fun, laughing along the way (some of the images in my head of your descriptions are toooo funny!), that I just had to post my little list of peeves.

Not really a peeve, but a "strong opinion" of mine is that folks should approach landscape design with much more use of perennials and interesting shrubbery (including some excellent dwarf varieties available these days), and less with annuals (expensive) and ground cover, though both of course have their places in many good designs. I wish someone had explained to me the joys of perennials a long time ago. Anyway, my peeves:

1. People here in south Texas who decide that ANYTHING growing in their yard is just too damn much work, so they tear it all out and put down gravel over the whole property. Now that's so very attractive. I'd rather see asiatic jasmine over an entire city lot than a bunch of ugly gravel.

2. Another thing I see is absolutely no variation in shrubbery planting. There are hundreds of types of many genus that offer different and beautiful leaf shapes, colors, varigations, etc., as well as seasonal leaf, berry, etc., interest, instead of boxwood, boxwood, boxwood ... a yaupon holly thrown in .... and did I mention a few boxwoods?

3. Planting too many bushes together. Whomever landscaped my yard initially, put in one corner of the backyard (in an area about 10' X 2'), this well-planned list: (2) crepe myrtles, (3) red tips, (2) non-dwarf eleagnus, and something else I never could identify (it was dead when I moved in - imagine!). It's all eventually had to come out except for the two crepe myrtles. Was able to burn some for firewood. :)

4. Another peeve: planting a specimen that doesn't go with anything else for miles around. Ok, so you like yucca? Great, plan a wonderful succulent bed. But please don't plant yucca alongside impatiens. It just looks dang silly. To really get aesthetically pleasing, one of my neighbors planted a yucca right smack-dab in the middle of their yard ... surrounded by nothing but grass. Oh so delightful.

5. Why do people plant something like a viburnum in the 8" of space between the garage and the yard edge? I'm currently pruning the one I inherited into a tree shape so it'll fit better, and look like someone who lives here has just an inkling of an idea of what she's doing, but it sure would be better if it weren't there at all. (Hate to dig up a perfectly health plant.)

Also, many thread messages back, the group was talking about "tried and true" plants. I don't think there's anything wrong with them. If they ain't broke, what's wrong with them? One of my beds that I really enjoy has perennial blue sage, Moonglow coreopis, Stella daylillies, red bearded tounge, variegated lirope clusters and spots of dusty miller. This easy-care bed is a joy and when it's 100F for two months straight in the summer, it's still looking grand.

Ha-ha...thought I might could bump this post up, for anyone who may have missed it.
Was just reading different forums on Gardenweb on this cold rainy night in Georgia...and glad I checked into this one.
Amusing stories!...The topic: Common Design Errors turned into personal pet-peeves...Looks as if I might have made (another)error...I wanted more sunshine in the front yard, to grow Roses this Spring, so we had professionals cut and remove two huge Pine trees and 2 large Crepe Myrtles from one side of our yard...It once looked woodsy and private.
Now, it just looks "naked" Searching now for fast growing shrubs or small trees to use in the background...
It's a challenge, like starting all over again.
Does anyone remember several years ago a post called" "Help, my neighbors are copying me?"....I don't remember which forum it was on...and I think it fell off the boards a long time ago, but it got my attention and was the first post I responded to...After we bought this house...we remodeled alot, we planted flowers and trees and bushes on an almost bare lot...at first, when the neighbors directly across from us started copying what we did...we thought just a coincidence...then we laughed about it...but then, it got annoying. We painted the trim work, so did the neighbor, we put a birdbath on side of our yard, so did the neighbor, we put up a short fence, so did he...If he saw my husband planting something, and I wasn't outside, he would rush over and ask him what it was, where did he buy it, how much did it cost?... Finally, after years of being nosey, and he had every plant that we did, he doesn't cross the road anymore. A few years ago, my DH built a small barn... the neighbor would stand there talking to him and watch.
DH thought he was just there to chat...until, as soon as DH finished the barn...the neighbor built his own... not only built a nice huge barn, but a living quarters attached to it...DH says it has a living room,bedroom and a bath. They have a real large house and there's only him and his wife.
I'm almost positive that when I plant the Roses, the neighbor will do the same (only more)...No doubts.
Didn't know people like that existed. Unbelievable. (almost)
That's my pet peeve...copycats.

My pet peeves:

1. Grass lawns. How dull, impractical, and usually toxic. Why do nearly all houses have grass lawns? You need to mow them every week, they don't flower, and they look like hell in the winter. Very few weeds are not preferable to common grass. Dandylions are always an improvement. Even on golf courses.

2. Forsythia. It blooms for about two seconds and then looks like unruly hell.

3. Artificial ponds. They nearly always look like plastic buckets with non-native plants and fish in them. Practically none of them aren't aesthetic failures.

4. Concrete pavers. Any concrete, really. Concrete is very practical for basement and garage floors. You can scrub dirt off of it and it doesn't disintegrate. But aesthetically, it looks terrible, nearly all the time. And to have something as nasty as those Home Depot pavers or those horrible things people build walls out of in any sort of garden is to just ruin any hope for having an aesthetically pleasing effect.

5. Plastic picket fences and chain link fences. They always look terrible. Always.

6. Pansies. Actually, they aren't necessarily true mistakes, but I don't like them. They are silly and too delicate, and look like they should be made out of polyester. Among my least favorite flowers, and everyone seems to adore them but me.

7. Arches. These are usually just pieces of random furniture without any logic. Doors to nowhere, cluttering up the landscape. And I think diagonal lattice usually looks terrible in any form. Square lattice should be the common form.

What would I like to see more of? Intimate apple orchards, riotous wildflower meadows, and flamboyant carpets of native ferns. Local stones, minimally cut.

Just honesty, really.

--Jonathan

People who trim their shrubs wrong!
The ones that prune the aforementioned forsythias into a ball shape so that even when it does bloom, it looks like a yellow cotton ball.