Topic: Which flowers are good/bad for hayfever?

[umshamrock]

Hi,

In the last few months I saw a list in either Garden Answers or Gardener's World magazine of flowers that are ok for hayfever sufferers and flowers that are bad. Unfortunately, I can't find the magazine! Does anyone have this list? My husband is really miserable from hayfever and he is blaming my beautiful sweet peas!

Thank you for your help...

[supersprout]

If your OH asks his doc to arrange patch tests for different kinds of pollen, you'll be able to choose what he's not allergic to? :)

[Linda]

If it's the pollen he is allergic too (and I guess it usually is with hayfever) it will be the wind pollinated flowers that will set him off. Supersprout is right that patch tests would confirm an allergy but I think it unlikely a GP would arrange that unless the hayfever were so severe that it disabled him, in which case he'd probably have had them by now. If the pollen is visible in the flower and blowing off in a breeze it might be a suspect. FAR more likely to be grasses than your sweet peas!!

Love and compost
Linda (highly allergic to Willow, Alder, Birch and grass pollen, OK with every other flower)

[saddad]

Although my health has been really naff for the last few years this is one thing I have not been blessed with, that would be the pits!
 :o

[Robert_Brenchley]

I get a touch of it sometimes; it doesn't make it any easier to sit at the compurter marking GCSE's in this weather! But I've never had it badly, and hopefully it never will. I suspect that if I lived away from major roads, it would probably disappear altogether.

[supersprout]

I'm on drugs from mid-June to end July >:(

[Linda]

I'm on drugs all the year round   >:( (the legal variety, though, i promise.) ;D

Seriously though - hayfever and its cousin perennial rhinitis are no joke if you get them badly. Add that to asthma and eczema and life really can be quite sh***y. Thank goodness for modern drugs that combat all three, and thank goodness forthe NHS that provides them at an affordable price or free. I still get itchy and/or wheezy  at odd times, but at least I can function!

Love and compost
Linda