I think one of mine would be almost the exact opposite! Waiting for the sidewalk to be made, we decided to hold off on seeding the yard after building our house, but I decided on planting the "garden" on the other side of the sidewalk. All went great and I got a few bushes, some late summer/ fall perinnals and then that fall planted Crocus all down the edge of the bed. Spring came... sidewalk went in and time came to lay down the grass seed. Using the spreader and not realizing just how far that thing spreads.... managed to seed fescue grass seed all over my flower bed! I swear I'm still fighting the losing battle in there!

Got mad at my husband once while I was fertilizing the lawn. I was so steamed that I was thinking on it so hard that I found myself making the same circle again and again with the spreader. We ended up with a great big, deep green "O" in the middle of our front yard. Neighbors that it was a tribute to Ohio State University since we used to live in Columbus. Kind of funny.

My biggest gardening mistake was when we first moved to Ohio several years ago. I brought pots and pots of perennials from my old gardens that we had to get into the ground. We rented a rototiller to dig up the garden spots. My mistake was that in my tired of planting and moving frenzy I told my husband to not bother taking up the old grass from where he was going to til. HUGE MISTAKE...I've been fighting the grass growing in that garden ever since.

Thank goodness...all the other beds were done with ridding the area of grass first and, also, raised beds.

...Beverly

I'm feeling a little better about bombing my yard. Thanks guys. My second mistake was planting crown vetch in my flower bed in oklahoma. Who knew? One little plant . . .

Planting bamboo without installing a barrier,and also planting Bishop's weed.With experience comes wisdom,and maybe someone else can learn from my mistakes.

Speaking of Big O. My son who graduated from OSU came home with his lovely wife for the "Fourth". While she and I were sipping ice tea on the porch, son and his dad were getting tomato cages up and mowing some areas that finally dried out after all the rain. Dad let our son loose on the tractor. Well we are now sporting a huge O S U on the side of the hill in mowed grass. Next time he says he's going for Script Ohio!!! It's actually kind of cool especially since we're in a flight pattern for a small county airport. The joys of children!!!!! gc

Great stories! But, I can't believe that no one has confessed to planting mint unbound(someone on the PA forum did). I did and I know others out there have done the same - own up you guys! You know who you are!

Shouldn't they post a warning at the gardening stores?

I saw a show on bamboo on Suprise Gardener and they were trenching 3 foot buried barriers to contain it! I've never planted it, but I have respect for a plant that requires that kind of treatment!

Okay, I'll confess to unbound mint, lemon balm, lysimachia clethroides, AND comfrey. DUH!!

Celene

Once I created flower beds around my rose of sharon (hibiscus syriacus) trees. Big mistake! Glad I moved away from that situation.

One year at my Mom's, we scattered morning glory seeds and soon enough, we started to see 'morning glory' vines growing. So I got the ladder out and put some nails in a zigzag pattern up the wall and tied a mess of fishing line all around them. The morning glories soon reached the top of the garage wall but when they started to bloom, the flowers were just not right and not all all like morning glories. We finally figured out we had grown the most stunning black bindweed and still, about 7 or 8 yrs. later, sprouts were still coming up this year. Luckily Mom moved away from that situation.

Had to use the roundup a couple wks. ago on the little pink primroses. Spreading too fast and pulling them up was only invigorating them!

Yarrow goes on clearance for a reason. This does NOT mean that I should buy it! I do not like my yard to smell like dog poo! (Repeat this 10 times, take a deep breath, do it again.)

Oh yeah..lemon balm.I almost forgot.It's even growing in my lawn but at least it smells nice when when I mow.Ditto for chocolate mint.
I thought yarrow was fragrant,kind of like honey.Has anyone noticed that certain lantanas smell like cat urine? Why is that?

My lantanas smell good...but I shovel-pruned some boxwoods that smelled EXACTLY like cat spray. I couldn't stand the stink every time I left the house! No one could smell it but me...

Celene

hmm...unbounded mint, pennyroyal, valerian, feverfew. more mint, Rose of Sharon, more pennyroyal, etc. etc. I've just planted comfrey in the midst of about an acre of mint/pennyroyal. It should be interesting to see what wins this battle.

Morning Glories. OK, so I'll just plant a few next to the house, with the four o'clocks. Then add a few Moonflowers, and I have glorious summer long bloom all day. Right. Now I have exactly, and I counted, four hundred thousand morning glories, one four o'clock, and no moonflowers. So next year I pull some of the morning glories, and seed more four o'clocks. The moonflowers just arent' tough enough for the fight. This will work, won't it?

I saw Rose of Sharon trees listed twice above and got nervous. I am a newbie. I just planted 17 bushes and three Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus)trees last weekend. I planted one of the trees in the middle of my flower garden. Why is that a mistake? I can still move it if I just make a huge error. I live in Northwest Ohio so I am not sure the trees will survive the winter.

Hey Redtulip, my Rose of Sharon is at the back of my perennial bed too. Second year, so far no problem. Maybe I'm just a good weeder and didn't notice the sprouts. Maybe trouble is coming. Let's hear from those who know.

Rose of Sharon produces lots of seeds that seem to have a high germination rate.If the seedlings are allowed to grow for a year or two they are difficult to uproot.

The Rose of Sharon should do just fine in Northwest Ohio. Frankly, I'm not sure anything will kill it off! We put a 20x16 addition on our house dead center over a ROS. Within a year, it had crawled out from under the addition to grow into a 10' blooming bush. We whack it back to about 3 feet every year, and it returns just fine.

But with the exception of one or two little shoots, we've not seen it pop up anywhere else. Guess it just wants to live!

My neighbor killed her 15 ft. ROS by wacking it to death with a chainsaw last fall.

I thought it was a big mistake making a flower bed around a ROS at my previous home when there were HUNDREDS of seedlings in the bed the next year. I love them, though and miss them so much, I think I'm going to find a place for at least one.

Actually, this thread should include "what was the worst time when you planted". First year in a townhouse with a small patio. Can't get great results WAITING UNTIL THE LAST WEEK OF JUNE TO PLANT! Moved in June 13th, so I really didn't have a choice.I got all gung-ho for a little garden around the edges (about 18") of the patio surface. Surrounded by 6ft stockade fence on two side and brick wall on the third. Have 2 36" plastic window boxes on a 8ft deck board on sawhorses, and 2 boxes on the patio 'floor'. Planted unbounded spearmint, which is fun to watch pop up in different places. I'm shocked that some people don't like lots of mint! Transplanted that from my Mom's garden. Also a little pineapple mint, some lavender (for smell warfare..keep reading)The little white flowers on the basil stink, as my sister warned me, but not as bad as my neighbors patio, which does double-duty as dog potty--rarely cleaned. I had 5 tomatoes growing. My 3-year picked one because she knew I'd get mad about it. Squirrels or chipmunks tag-teamed the rest. Maybe I shouldn't have birdseed and birdfeeders on the patio also... My cayenne peppers are small and dark green. Wonder if they'll survive the 1st frost tonight? I think I'd better get them. The rosemary barely grew, but, boy, is it good in cooking! The marigolds (cheap) have been iffy, but better since I started hammering the garden with More-Ack-I'll-GroAhh. Overdid it with said chemical on the Pineapple and Curly mint planted in shade under huge tree out at front walk. They've kind of turned dark, shriveled up and died. Slugs or rust? Who knows...I sure as heck don't! The seed paper with shade perennial seeds embedded in it (which was guaranteed to sprout) has sprouted out front, but not gotten much further. Wonder if the sprouts and the mint in front will decide to be perennials or not? I found a HUGE piece of Tyvek Homewrap (like a giant white FedEx envelope) hanging from a tree near I-75 one day. I stapled it along two sides of the fence to reflect light (I have 'eastern' exposure on the patio). Seems to have helped. Girl at Ace Hardware told me that shaking cayenne pepper on everything helps to keep the critters away. A real 'Briar' cure she said. Somewhat effective. Might try a BB gun or D-Con next year (grin). If we move into a house next year, the mint will be a welcoming present for the next tenant, along with the ravenous squirrels and the dog stink! Good luck with your plants!

I have to agree about Rose-of-Sharon and Lysimachia. The Rose-of-Sharon produces tons of seedlings which I had to pull every year (the people who lived here before me planted them). I took them out two years ago and I still find a few coming up here and there. The Lysimachia "escapes" all over the place and is now growing in my lawn. Garden stores should place a "Mr. Yuck" sticker on all these plants even though they are nice to look at when in their little pots in the store.

Bought a house with flowerbeds that were over-run with mint, bishop's weed, rose of sharon, mightshade vines, morning glory, and sweet autumn clematis. (not to mention the poison ivy around the garage and the wild strawberry in the lawn) Enough said.

My new neighbor is great, though. She's a landscape designer and has been a wealth of information (and a couple of plants : )). A coldframe even appeared in my yard the other day. I think that she's eager to see the yard restored to what it once was, too. She thinks that I'm nuts when I talk about wintersowing. I can't wait to show her (and share with her) my bounty in the spring.

Ha! Winter Sowing payback. It's great. Hopefully you will have a convert for us in the form of a professional who can chip in with her two cents worth.

Good Luck!

My biggest gardening mistake had to be the year I decided to provide my 4 darling kitties with fresh grown catnip. The catnip grew great - no problem there - and my kitties loved it.

Unfortunately, so did all the OTHER neighborhood kitties! They were all stumbling around with a wacky look on their faces, and the center part of my "south" garden had been "rolled flat as a pancake. A real shambles.

Nowdays I only grow catnip on my 2nd floor balcony, in a pot. That way only my own cats are allowed to imbibe!

The lot across our back fence has a hedge of Rose of Sharon, right against the fence. The sprouts come up ten feet away from the fence. The ones that are on the lawn get mowed down, no problem, but when we moved in two summers ago there was an 8 foot wide strip where the Rose of Sharon and other weeds had completely taken over. It was an evil mosquito-ridden jungle.

Last month we hewed everything down to the ground, covered it with cardboard, and dumped 10 yards of purchased topsoil on top of it. (And now I'm wishing I'd paid the extra $100 or so to get compost instead, like I did for my raised beds the previous year...) Hopefully that will get rid of the mess underneath! The area is intended to become a lovely shade garden, but I will be very careful to root up the unwanted Rose of Sharons at least once a year.

Plopping down plants without researching them.

Spurge. I still shudder thinking about it.

When I make new gardens I do not plow or turn the soil. I lay down about six layers of newspaper right on top of the grass where I want the new bed. On top of the newspaper, if I have grass clippings, leaves, straw, etc. then I put those on. I top it off with a 4" to 6" layer of mulch. So, when I made a garden last spring for my "prize heirloom tomatoes" I used this method. At the same time we were making the tomato bed we were in the process of uncovering the pool. A light bulb immediately lit up in my brain! The leaves from the previous fall were on the pool cover and had already started to break down. Absolutely PERFECT for my new tomato garden so we piled them on! About a week later, I went out to check on my tomato plants and there were at least FIFTY maple trees coming up in my newly planted garden. Then another little light bulb lit up.......along with those maple leaves were hundreds of maple seeds......DUH!!!! I pulled maple tree seedlings out of the tomatoes all summer and they are STILL popping up this year. No wonder the deer did not bother my tomatoes. They undoubtedly thought the stupid woman who planted all those trees certainly did not have tomatoes worth eating!! :-)

i thought my mother was just being a paranoid fanatic killjoy when she told me to dig up the bishops weed and the cushion spurge i had just planted. i decided to ignore her. she always thinks anything that doubles its size in one year is wildly invasive. the next year they were still well behaved plants. the third year though it was a nightmare! i swear those two must have a fleet of submarines to dive down in the soil and pop up 5,10 and even 20 feet away!
And also running amuck right over top of choice perennials.
I eventually had to dig it all up and sift the soil thru my fingers to make sure i got all the root pieces out!
that took me a few days to do! I told my mother I had to learn the hard way to listen to other peoples advice... and and to think about I am planting something.

I now tell this story when giving hort lectures to gardenclubs and libraries etc. As Alison mentioned earlier
'Know Thy Plant'

My mistake was artemesia. I just loved the Oriental Limelight. I bought one little plant. The next spring, I had thousands of plants everywhere. The hardest part was trying to pull them out of the middle of all my iris bulbs. I never knew one teeny tiny plant could spread so fast and so far. I still like the O Limelight, but now I like it in a pot on my deck, far far away from my flower beds.

And yes I work in a greenhouse. And many people came in and said how much they liked the plant but wouldn't buy it because it spread so much. And there is nothing on the tag about it being invasive. So of course I knew better than my customers and bought it anyway. Because - how bad could it be????? The customer is always right.

Not doing more raised beds instead of tilling and amending existing soil. Things just grow better in raised beds.

-Jon

I've seen many of my mistakes here, Mint and Rose of Sharon being two of the biggest. The ones I haven't seen are:
Datura - A friend gave me roots 10 years ago, i am still pulling up volnteer Datura.
Sweet Annie - once again, a friend gave me a plant years ago, I am still trying to get rid of
Chamomile - yet another friend gave me this, and I let the flowers go to seed.

Either I need to get new friends, or research the plants they give me before I plant them!

When we moved in our new home 34 yrs ago. We spent many $$$$ on plants and such for the beds. My father in law had horses! Great a free source of manure! I didnt ask anyone about using FRESH manure in the beds. WELL everything died I found out that fresh manure was too HOT to use. The next year I got "conditioned" manure and everything was well. The soil in those flower beds can still be turned with a small flower trowel.