As I have been systematically weeding, cleaning, and thinning my beds I have had quite a bit of time to contemplate my selection of perennials. Some have driven me mad by "overly thriving". I am having to make decisions on what to keep and what to jettison.

Last year I removed all my clumps of ruella humulis. It was pretty but I did not care for how it flopped all over AND it was a horrible reseeder. I still find seedlings coming up all over. Brazilian verbena is the same. I had just two single stalks of it last year and I have MILLIONS of seedlings coming up. Never again. I'm done with it!

This past week I made the decision to remove my last stand of sedum acre. I love it. But it just is too invasive. I also removed another NOID sedum. I liked it (except the yellow blooms). I knew it would spread easily and it filled in some spaces nicely. But I did not know that it would RESEED all over!! I guess that would have be just ok if it were fancy in color but it was just plain green. Now I have some space for some more colorful ground covers.

Last year I winter sowed tall Sweet William. I put it in two beds last fall in a hurry. Well this year it is big and both are in the wrong place. Also, it was a mix and some of the colors clashed. After a bit of debating I pulled out one stand. And I think the other stand will come out when it comes time to plant other things. My real estate is just too valuable.

Helliopsis, Agastache Golden Jubilee and Agastache Globetrotter are three other things that reseed like crazy. But they get to stay. I like all of them too much and the seedlings are easy enough to pull.

I used to love day lilies and was in danger of becoming a collector. But it did not take very long for my first round of stands to mature and become too much to handle with the space I have. So I keep thinning the ones I have but no longer am tempted to add new varieties. Plus, they just don't bloom long enough for me.

And finally iris. Ah iris! Again, I am in danger of becoming a collector. Again, something that multiplies quickly for me. Again, something that just does not bloom for very long in the season. But I love them! They seem to thrive anywhere I toss them. I never buy iris. There are plenty of people willing to giving away their thinnings.

What are your perennial love hate relationships?

Generally, anything that creeps or drops tons of seeds!

Cannas. Oh I love the leaves, and the flowers, and put them where their creeping nature won't bother other plants (totally alone in spots from which they can't escape,) but they get totally infested every summer with leaf roller caterpillars, which I feel compelled to battle, manually (I don't have any garden chems,) which I don't doing mind at all, but get a lot of extra mosquito bites, and quite sweaty, doing it.

Dahlias, no, they're never going to stand up on their own...

I am lucky to have a fence that is perfect for growing dahlias along! Otherwise, yes, they would not be on my list of to grow.

I forgot about cannas. I like them. I have to dig them up every fall. So they don't get out of hand for me. But the tubers do multiply and I end up giving them away.

Glads. Love them. Hate the way they lean and then bend.

I'm sure there are more but those are what came to mind first.

Iris. The flowers I hate as much as weeds. Because they are so popular, I have tried to like all the colors and varieties. But, no. I just can't. And each time I see a parade of iris photos, I just hate them more. The smell nauseates me to the point I am weak and dizzy when I pass by some in a yard. And I passed by them all the time when I lived in Denver. Here, there are more rock gardens than iris, so I don't have to worry much about them.

Sunflowers. There are a lot of plants that other people call invasive that I would rather have than sunflowers. I never plant the seeds, but I am always getting them. I let most of them grow because I know the pollinators love them. I love to make the pollinators happy, or I would have destroyed them all.

Red raspberries. I love berries. I would eat them day and night. But red raspberries are definitely not worth the trouble of growing. I didn't even know I could love any kind of raspberry until I grew some Fall Gold raspberries I ordered from directgardening.com one year. I grew them because they were berries, duh. I thought maybe the squirrels and birds would like them and eat them instead of my blackberries and strawberries. I also grew elderberries as my first berries, so they would eat those instead of the other berries I planned to grow. Either my elderberries were extremely prolific or the birds didn't like them. Never saw one bird near the elderberries.

After daring myself to taste the fall gold raspberries, I was hooked. You can bet I will be growing more of them. I didn't mind the thorns on the blackberries, but the thorns on the fall gold raspberries prevented grabbing fistfuls of the berries to shove in my mouth.

Hibiscus. I love them in photos. But most I have seen in real life and up close look horrible, always have infestations of some kind that are really creepy. I believed for a long time that all photos of hibiscus were manipulated because of the quantity I have seen that look like they'd spent two weeks at Walmart's clearance rack resort.

Juniper. I am allergic to them. But I often manage to live where there is a juniper I can't avoid.

Crabapples. I can't believe these are grown as edibles for consumption by humans. Bitterly foul tasting. Provide very little shade. They hurt your feet when you step on them, and you are always stepping on them because every crapapple tree I have known drops their fruit by the dozens and there are few people that eat them enough to bother cleaning up the dropped ones. Neighborhood bullies pick them up to throw them at others.

Those are the ones at the top of my head.

Just roses for me. Fifty-one weeks of concern and care, and the one week they're at their peak is liable to be the one when I'm away!
It's pretty darn tough to sniff a picture!

For me Spiderwort. I have been trying for years to eradicate these from my front garden. No matter how many I pull up dig up or spray [ witch I hate to do ] they always come back.

I'm with you there Bob, but not the front garden, it's the back garden on the other side of the fence to the alley drive. It used to be Purple Coneflowers but they were taken out when they seemed virus'd, spiderwort and goldenrod just seem to have taken over.
Fall Clematis is another one. I thought I could manage it for several years, but then my vigilance must have eased and it got away.
Sunflowers make said list but they're tolerated as goldfinches and cardinals love them; also serve as a privacy barrier to some extent.
Paw Paw Tree - I planted a couple and waited 7 years to taste their fruit (unique), in their ninth year they're attempting to colonize by sending up new spawn from underground roots.
Perilla - makes a nice dark foil to accentuate other garden colors but reseeds itself to no end.
Finally there is English Ivy, where bounded it makes a nice (not to be mowed) area. At some point in the past I must have moved some to the garden out back and it continually jumps the 6' privacy fence into the neighbor's property.

jmorth said: ...
Finally there is English Ivy, where bounded it makes a nice (not to be mowed) area. At some point in the past I must have moved some to the garden out back and it continually jumps the 6' privacy fence into the neighbor's property.

I don't know how I forgot to mention the ivy, but I totally agree with this. My neighbor had this taking over their house practically. The ivy was ready to consume my house as well. The south side of my house, outside the dining room window would have been nice for a flower bed. But after battling the iris that grew between our yards, I thought the little bit of ivy would be a piece of cake. NOT! The iris would pop up every few years and the darn ivy consumed more and more of my front yard where I had things growing for myself. Not gonna happen with that ivy around as greedy for space as it is.

Ivy is also a spider factory. They love making webs in ivy. If there is the tiniest opening or crack in the window or door frames, the spiders become your next of kin.

All of the perennials Jennifer mentioned. I will also add a Campanula Urtificola. in spite of religeous deadheading it spreads like mad.
I have records that go back to '09 and I believe it was planted the year before. Bluestone no longer carries it.






This corner was also planted with Buggy Crazy lilies. In frustration in April last year I doused the area with a weed killer. The dread plants were the only thing showing. Well weed killer killed everything including lilies .
Guess what? IT'S back ,just a few but I pull'em when I sees 'em.
I have a whole new garden there now.

I also need to add Anemone Sylvestris. If you need a plant to spread fast and you dont care where it goes. This is a good candidate. It drove me nuts after the third year.

I've had or have problems with almost everything you all have mentioned above. Cleome is another really bad reseeder, but I really do like it and usually end up letting one or two grow each year. Moning glories also have the reseeding problems. Been years since I've let any bloom and I still pull lots and lots each year. The low growing sedums I love more than I hate, so let many of them grow, but pull up many each year. Not too bad since they are so easy to pull. Had a blue globe thistle that I also got rid of because it reseeded all over and they were hard to pull unless you got them right away. Goldstrum rudbeckia has left my garden too because of the reseeding and also most asters because they reseed or get diseases. Talinum paniculatum. Same problem with reseeding. Gout weed, spreads too much.

Can anyone guess by looking at this photo another plant I have a mostly hate relationship with this time of the year? Hint: It's not the lily.

Took me quite a bit to figure it out!!! When we moved into our new house there was a maple , a very nice large one, back by the shed. That first summer I cursed the "helicopter" to no end. I cursed the tree and wished it gone.

I came home one day in the fall and my husband had cut it down!! Happy happy happy dance.

Jennifer,thanks for the hint. I confess I didnt recognize it but took another look.

I got it pretty quickly; mostly because I just spent a couple of agonizingly slow and tedious hours pulling hundreds of Ash seedlings from the strawberry bed.

ckatNM said:
Hibiscus. I love them in photos. But most I have seen in real life and up close look horrible, always have infestations of some kind that are really creepy. I believed for a long time that all photos of hibiscus were manipulated because of the quantity I have seen that look like they'd spent two weeks at Walmart's clearance rack resort.

Crabapples. I can't believe these are grown as edibles for consumption by humans. Bitterly foul tasting. Provide very little shade. They hurt your feet when you step on them, and you are always stepping on them because every crapapple tree I have known drops their fruit by the dozens and there are few people that eat them enough to bother cleaning up the dropped ones. Neighborhood bullies pick them up to throw them at others.

It tickled me that you wrote that. I had hibiscus at my last house, but I did like them. First, I always thought hibiscus were hot-climate plants but there they were in zone 6, so I was surprised. Second, these grew like crazy and I had to cut them down to a manageable size twice each growing season (they were shaped to be a high hedge). They never had infestations and were full of flowers when they came. I wish I had taken pictures.

I, too, have crabapple trees. They grow up angry and twisted because the deer keep shaving the leaves off of their low/young limbs, then they have a fit from lack of summer water and drop all of their other leaves and fruit. They return next year just as angry and twisted. We don't eat the fruit, either. I got all excited about having apple trees on our property when we first moved here, then found out they were inedible. We have 4 and I want to take them all down.

Parsley emerges from every rock crevice in our garden and we don't even grow it.

This is a fun idea for a thread!

How about a hate hate plant . Chameleon plant -- houttuynia cordata. Just leave one little piece of root and it is back like crazy.

NJBob said:How about a hate hate plant . Chameleon plant -- houttuynia cordata. Just leave one little piece of root and it is back like crazy.

Don't even get me started on that one!!!

Variegated snow on the mountain. Looks nice even in dry shade. Infests the garden like a cancer. Fallopia japonica, pretty where I want it, creeps everywhere. Kniola Black morning glory reseeds by the millions, that's pretty much just a hate by now.

Cameleon plant HA!!! Ask Pirl about it. I am so glad I never was tempted to buy that.
Creeping Jenny and Lamiums are my latest Hate - hates.