Topic: Like/don't like

[Grandma]

The threads in 'Edible' stuff inviting us to reveal our favourite/least favourite veg were a lot of fun - how about doing one for flowers/plants?
To kick off -
I really, really love oriental poppies, tall bearded irises, lily of the valley and 'show' auriculas - and couldn't live without my pyracanthas! Pet hate is pampass grass - especially in small gardens. And I just can't be doing with roses! Brown sticks for 6 months of the year - black spot, rust and greenfly for the other 6! (Smell nice, though! ;)) 

[manicscousers]

bleeding heart (dicentra)..clematis, sooo many as there's 4 seasons, sweet peas, sweet william, but my first love's fruit, followed by veggies  ;D

[sawfish]

I especially love Fritillaria, Hellebores, Poppies and Snowdrops in that order but really dont like Daffodils, Dahlias, Gladioli, those big puffy roses and Yucca type things.

Smell wise I love Honeysuckle.

I dont like flowers that look false or designed, my dislike of daffodils is firstly a dislike of their shape and the fact I hate the colour yellow and secondly because they're everywhere and boring. I've never liked them.

[triffid]

In the early months, I love anything courageous enough to stick a bud above ground! Snowdrops and hellebores are my heroes.

At this time of year? Primroses and periwinkles, please... just spotted in the churchyard among the miniature daffs. Sorry, sawfish, got to disagree with you about yellow -- yellow and blue are the floral notes of springtime! :D

Follow that with bleeding-heart, Solomon's seal, bluebells and lily-of-the-valley; a garage sprawled over by a rampant clematis montana and monstrous Albertine rose, with a scent to knock you flat (and whose 'brown sticks' (;) grandma) provide a year-round framework for the aforesaid montana plus a Cardinal Rouge clem and a passionflower... And magnolias, from dainty stellatas to stately soulangeanas, in every other front garden.

Then high summer. Columbine (another vote for aquilegia!); Lavender. English lavender... almost invisible under my bees working it, God willing! And more roses; Graham Stuart Thomas is my favourite because it's a joyful brute that just keeps flowering from June to December. No blackspot or mildew; just a plague of tiny caterpillars every so often, but at least they leave the flowers alone!

I'll have dahlias by then down on the lottie, like summer fireworks and taller than Tiny Triff... with self-seeded cosmos nodding between them. And a potato vine on the garden fence that takes over where the clematis left off in a bid to cover the world in flowers. And bramble. Lots, please! (there speaks the beekeeper again) and field poppies, and cornflowers...

Autumn, back to a blaze of yellow and orange: rudbeckias,

'Don't like?' Pampas grass, I'm with you on that one... not keen on chrysanths (they smell of bad flower arrangements and the death of the year). But apart from that... I guess I'm a fan of things that grow... :D 


 

[Grandma]

Oooooh sorry Triff!!!  :-[  Didn't mean to slag off CLIMBING roses! Don't class those as 'brown sticks' Different beasts altogether. I have a 'Compassion' climber just outside my kitchen door - (its glorious perfume almost smothers the garlic odours all summer!) - and I have a clematis scrambling through it, too! Its only a Montana Rubra(?) - and it has ONE FLOWER on it today!  ;) (The clematis, that is - not the rose.) Am I forgiven?

[Mrs Ava]

Snakes head fritillaria have to be my faves.  Sitting here trying to think of flowers I love, and I love them all EXCEPT roses.  Nope, do nothing for me, I'm not even that crazy about the scent.  Have had them in all the gardens I have moved into, and the first thing I have done is wrip them out.  ;D

[ACE]

Love them all if they are in the ground. Not cut or in hanging baskets

[sarah]

love - all thoses cottageee perranials such as hollyhocks and lupins and cosmos and penstemons and all the woodland stuff like bluebells and violets and hellebores and snowdrops (not too keen on crocuses though) and the lovely wild things like poppies and daisys and ragged robind and ooooo so much lovely stuff out there!! roses daffs primroses.....

dont love (dont think i could ever actually hate a flower) - hyacinths begonias busy lizzies and lilies. 

[triffid]

 ;D ;D No need to apologise, Grandma! I know what you mean about roses that make a fuss and faint and fail at the slightest provocation. But give me a rose (or any other plant) that wants to LIVE and I'll love it and give it room in my garden.

[emmy1978]

Love - a packed herbaceous border, although not keen on gladioli. Love anything wild and woodlandy, bluebells or poppies and those tiny . Love my clematis, lavender, roses (yellow dutch gold just sublime, although like having aged, sickly, victorian invalid to care for some years, and yes, brown sticks to boot) Lilac..mmmmm. My latest love are primulas. Not so much the little ones, although they are sweet, but the japanese primroses. Oh and livingstone daisy, just for their enthusiasm. Could go on about flowers all day! At the lottie I've planted acidenthera, californian poppies, dahlias, and 2 clematis - Dr Ruppel and Sunstar.

[Robert_Brenchley]

Trilliums have to be my favourites. I do have a fondness for Dracunculus, but the smell is truly disgusting.

[Jeannine]

Freesias for their wonderful smell,but snowdrops have to take first place for me.
 
My Mum loved them .When I was a very small  kid you could  get bundles of them wrapped in newspaper with mud on in the shops.I remember buying her some, it took all my pocket money,she was so thrilled she cried, next year of course I did the same thing and it became a yearly ritual. When I went to live overseas I even had them sent through an Interflora florist, wrapped in newspaper with mud on. The year after my Mum died when the snowdrops came out was sad and sweet at the same time.

They will always be very special to me.

XX Jeannine

[sawfish]

I will now love snowdrops even more after reading what Jeannine wrote.

Lovely.

[emmy1978]

Me too.  :'(

[honeybee]

Snowdrops have a special meaning to me regarding my Mum too Jeannine  :-*

My faves, snowdrops, bleeding hearts, poppies, sweet peas, begonias,red hot pokers, clematis, peonies

Least fave, the unidentified plant that i have that self seeds in the lawn  :-X

[emmy1978]

Trilliums have to be my favourites. I do have a fondness for Dracunculus, but the smell is truly disgusting.

Yes robert, stunning but revolting at the same time!!

[Amazin]

I like my plants and shrubs whiffable, climbable or edible. Preferably all three.

My bluebells are coming through at present - can't wait.

But the one plant I love more than anything in my garden - my 'herald of good things to come' and the one I'd save in a disaster (maybe that's another thread!) - is my Philadelphus 'Belle Etoile'. The first whiff of that stops me in my tracks and I start singing: 'here we go, here we go...'!

 ;D

[Grandma]

Jeannine - that's so lovely.   It's the lily of the valley that do that for me. I can remember, as a very small child, being lifted by my Nan into a hammock hung between two huge, old apple trees and lying back, looking through the mass of blossoms at the bits of bright blue sky. Nan's garden boasted only grass, chickens and a one border, taken over entirely by lily of the valley. I can't smell them, even now, without hearing dear Nan, with her funny Yeovil accent, saying, "Bide quiet now, child, and don't ye be falling on they fowl.'  :'(  :)

[Jeannine]

Grandma, that hits the spot too, it is so good to be able to share these old family tales  XX Jeannine

[jennym]

I like my glads, the only flower that seems to be able to grow reliably, I know some think they are naff but I like them  ;D. They get left in the garden border all year now, and there is nothing like a 20ft row of showy glads, all different colours to cheer me up! Also like primula auricula in the spring, and my tiny daffs, and other tiny alpine & rock plants, don't know the names of most of them, Echivera is one I do know. Best of all though, is the blossom on the apple and plum trees, it's beautiful and you know that the fruit to follow will be splendid.
Not keen on bizzy lizzies, or low bedding plants, only really because haven't got room and have never been successful I suppose.