Butterfly bush... it never looks like I think it should, no matter where I put it.

Lavander MUST be in exactly the right spot to look like it belongs... as if it just settled-in totally uninvited and un-noticed until, suddenly!, you discover it's there and wonder where it came from. "My how charming, wherever do you suppose it came from? It must have been Fairy planted."

Anything that requires zero maintenance, unlike the bulbs and tropicals I love!

Man, if I only liked dumb fortnight lilies, stella d'oro daylilies, rosemary, juniper, or variegated pittosporum, I'd be in heaven-- right here in my apartment complex. Yukky. Good thing for balconies, huh? *lol*
Amanda 'romando'

my life would be SO MUCH EASIER if I liked Bermuda Grass! :D

Bougainvillea - I visually love this vine. I love it in various colors tumbing over walls and arbors. I love it in masses along the sides of the road. I love it everyplace I see it....except in my yard.

I so wish this vine weren't such a pain in the ass.

Rosemary. I like the look, but the smell is awful to me and sends my sinuses into allergy hell. sigh . . . I will just enjoy it from afar.

Mexican fan palm--unmaintained and messy--and Italian cypress--with the lower six feet of branches pruned off. Complete eye sores.

These sorry landscape focal points have ruined it for me and I will probably never plant a palm or a cypress.

Anything pink. There are so many cool Clematis, but they're p-p-p-p-pink. Mandevilla...nice plant, but it's
p-p-p-p-pink. Why can't they come in orange? LOL

wanda

A family from the Azores islands bought the house next door and drove us wild with the smell of her cooking. She had a beautiful rosemary growing in her front yard to which I attributed the wonderful aroma. I took a cutting and have been growing it here in our new location for several years. Our cooking still lacks something, but we keep trying. Al

I love the colorful flowers of the Guranium, but the smell I can do without. Never learned to spell the word correctly either because of my dislike of the smell. Ugh!

English Ivy. If only I could like English Ivy.
I have slope along the side of my house about 60 ft. long and 15 ft. wide. Somebody, at some point before we moved in here, decided to plant the whole thing w/ Ivy. It's a maintenance nightmare - spreads across the lawn...up into the Pine tree...up the brick walls and over into the neighbor's yard. Then I think of all of the GOOD stuff that could be planted in that wasted space. If that weren't enough, the neighbors behind me have a slope full of Ivy which creeps through my back fence. IMHO this stuff ought to be eliminated from the nursery trade here as a foreign invasive, rodent harboring, uncontrollable weed.
Whew.
Rant over.

Oh I forgot one -- I wish I could love the Ipheion bulbs that are still spreading like wild fire even in spots where I have spent HOURS sifting every tiny piece of bulb I could see with my naked eye. Except in one single spot, where I planted a bulb or two at the same time as the others. It hasn't grown in size or spread at all, but it keeps coming up and blooming year after year. What ever is (or isn't) in that soil in that little spot must be the reason. It also gets much less water than the other spots. Too bad I can't just stop watering!

Cape honeysuckle. I love the vermilion blooms, and so do the hummingbirds, but the previous owners of our house let it get out of hand, and it sends out long, tough runners on top or invisibly just under the ground and keeps popping up in parts of the garden where it is unwanted. The main plant was forever growing out to touch a neighbor's house and had to be trimmed, while it got so tall that poor DH was doing dangerous stunts to reach the high branches. Finally we agreed to replace it with something less invasive. A lot of other things are going to have to be disturbed to truly get rid of it, though.
I also dislike the English (?) ivy that is running rampant everywhere in one section of our garden and keeps having to be scraped off of walls.

Weeds! This includes Robynlacy's Bermudagrass, LOL.

My gardening life would be so much easier if I didn't have to spend half my time weeding my many garden beds. I could spend more time in the lounge chair ENJOYING my flowers.

I just returned from helping my daughter at her new house and I've discovered that I truely hate the look of over-pruned Nandina. Why can't hired gardeners keep their pruners to themselves instead of hacking off the top of every plant in a yard. Grrrrr.

I have some beautiful Nandina that get the oldest canes bottom cut-away once a year; and they look the way they are suppose to look.... not with their heads hacked off.

BERMUDA SORREL
yesterday my best friend came over and let out a big pleased sigh saying "oh this fresh green and the vibrant yellow -it's so beautiful!" I so wish I could go back to that innocent state of mind where I enjoied Bermuda Sorrel. This time of year it covers every inch in the garden, in the orchard and in the meadow. I still pull it out in the raised vegetable beds, but anywhere else I've given up.

VINCA
just tossed a pile of half decayed vinca into the compost, ripped them out last autumn with no end in sight. This is a riparian area and there is vinca everywhere.

CAPE IVY
same sad story.

BOX HEDGE. This isn't the English countryside, this is Santa Barbara, which is actually chaparral near the ocean. I am a cottage gardener and would probably love box in another setting. However, we have old scraggily, badly shaped box hedges in front of the house, 3-4 feet tall, 3 feet wide in front of the picture windows--30 feet of it. It is UGLY. The landlord is attached to it and has a untalented gardener come and go at it with his chain saw several times a year (instead of twice). I easily have 150 perenniels that I have planted on this property but have to live with those hedges out front.

Any and all PINEY/CONIFEROUS SHRUBS. Again, the landlord planted them in the 50's (I kid you not) on either side of the walkway. The problem with z10/SoCAL is that plants just won't die--but they don't necessarily thrive either. They are so not happening. They are in filtered shade so they are really not happening. They are all over this town and scream of 50's landscaping when the rage was lawns and shrubs only.

And I wish I could love the PITTISPORUM TREE in the back yard. It is a tree with trunk 3' feet in diameter and has been so badly pruned and then unpruned over the years--it looks like it belongs in a Dr. Suess story. The poor thing has a circular brick/cement patio around it 4 feet from the back door. So those little sticky seeds are everywhere: on the rugs, on the couch, in the bed sheets. My man is out there sweeping all the time. It is in bloom right now so it does it redeem itself for a couple of weeks. Pittisporum was in bloom in February oh so many years ago when we fell in love, so we try to appreciate this particularly awful speciman for the memories the scent brings us.

Such a good thread, this one. If only I could learn to love these three things, my gardening life would be perfect. Kristine

I wish I liked fortnight lilies and society garlic but I don't. Same with vinca, Algerian ivy, and Iceberg roses.

Also...what about Mexican Primrose, and African Daisies?
So beautiful when blooming, but will take over the whole garden, paths and all. I've tried pulling them out one by one, every year, but can't get rid of them.

I just wanted to comment a bit on a few of the plants mentioned here and some others.

I LOVE (and have) roses, bougainvillea, cape honeysuckle, and also rosemary. They can seem have their downsides, but to me the positives FAR outweigh the negatives.

Roses have those sharp thorns, which can puncture your skin, as they have mine on occasion. My roses' leaves sometimes have problems, but after they've been carefully pruned, new lovely leaves reemerge! Beautiful rose flowers are so worth any pain that I would never part with them.

Bougainvillea can get quite large and sometimes needs some modification (pruning), but I feel so content viewing the flower display even when this plant is expanding.

Cape honeysuckle is just so bright and cheerful, that it would never make sense to me to not have it. I personally haven't noticed any problems arising from this plant and anything that draws hummingbirds can get an A+ in my book!

Rosemary can have a very strong and very unappealing-to-some-scent, but it still sure tastes good in my plate!

*Another rather thorny plant I own is Natal Plum. I enjoy the look of the foliage and I want to see if it will produce fruit. Right now it is quite small, but I enjoy it, thorns and all!

*As far as weeds--Well, I like and can appreciate plants that some people could/can consider weeds. I think the term used frequently to describe these types is invasive, yes, that is it.
Examples:

Batchelor's Buttons (I've grown it/am trying to regrow it), sadly it has yet to reach invasive status.

Dame's Rocket (growing it)--I've seen picture of the flowers and heard they smell nice. Hoping these will overtake some area of my garden.

Trumpet Creeper (I've heard of this one and its AMAZING ability to attract hummingbirds)--too bad it seems so destructive and such a deterrent--to humans. The hummingbirds probably could care less about this human predicament.

And finally, yes, the Tree of Heaven!!! (which my neighbor owns). I think it is so interesting how it forms leaves after losing them and looking like it had died and gone to, you know!, grows anywhere it can, attracts flies like crazy when in bloom, can smell, and can produce seedlings galore, and I just think the name is so fitting...Come on people, lets appreciate plants :)