Plenty! Some are worse than others.

One of the worst at the moment is Houttuynia cordata - in parts of the garden it runs everywhere through clumps of plants and like Couch Grass, leave a tiny piece and away it goes again. On top of all this the underground stems are very deep indeed. I would never plant this again!

Oxalis magellanica - pretty rock plant but likes soil with a high organic content and away it goes - everywhere! It was particularly bad in the Lake District garden and of course no prizes for guessing, it is in this garden as well. This is just one large patch - thank heavens. Don't plant this, once it runs, you will never get rid of it.

Another Oxalis which is misbehaving is our native - Oxalis acetosella. This is surprising, but it really has got a hold in one part of the garden forming a thick matt. Can't make up my mind if I have made a mistake allowing this one to get hold.

Neillia tibetica is a nuisance and runs everywhere appearing in the middle of other plants. It is difficult to control, I keep on pulling this out, but it still comes up everywhere.

Blechnum pinna marina has formed huge mats and can smother other perennials. It is a nuisance in one part of the garden where it has run through everything. It doesn't seem to have actually killed anything.

Ivy - Hedera helix is now running too vigorously throughout many parts of the garden. It is serious on the steep slope where it is suffocating other plants and ferns that have been planted. It does not respond to glycoposphate very well so one has to resort to pulling the stems. This only controls and is far from a permanent answer.

Brambles - Rubus - on the side will take over very quickly if not controlled. The good news is if you constantly pull the runners it weakens the plant very quickly and dies. The side before it was "made" into a garden was nothing but an impenetrable mass of brambles. If they are not controlled they will quickly take over again. On the side, leave things for 5 years and you will be back to bramble thickets again. This is what will happen if the garden is not maintained!

Mistakes with information put on this site - spelling of plant names or just plain wrong names is one of the most difficult to avoid. Leycesteria crocothyrsos, Itea ilicifollia were recent examples of such mistakes I actually noticed! What about the ones I have missed? It is more serious than one imagines, as the mistakes are picked up by the search engines, especially Google. I try my best to double check the authenticity of the names used. The R.H.S. Plant Finder 2003-2004 has been used to check the nomenclature and spellings of plant names used on this site. Proof reading to double check is very time consuming and as of 23/12/04 about half the plant names have been checked. Hopefully most of the mistakes will be ironed out but there are no absolute guarantees! Even after checking the spelling of Embothrium coccineum I managed to misspell coccineum as conccineum. This has of course been corrected, but shows how easy it is for these misspellings to occur. We need a botanical spell check!!

At long last (9th January 2005) all plant names have checked against the RHS Plantfinder 2003-4. This has taken an inordinate amount of time as Java scripting has to be changed for any photograph involved. The moral of this - get it right first time around! It is essential to print a hard copy to proof read a site, proof reading off the monitor screen does not work, it is as if the brain does not register mistakes! Tony Lord in his article 'The Internet: a Source of Information on Plants' in The Plantsman, The RHS, New Series Volume 3, Part 3, September 2004, p. 144-145 does make reference to the phenomenon of misspellings on web sites. This illustrates one of the major problems on information on the Internet, few articles are peer reviewed. People should work on the principle that all material on the Internet is suspect until thoroughly cross checked and verified - even this site!

A good example of misidentification is Drimys winteri var. andina which has been correctly identified as Drimys lanceolata. This applied to April 2003/4 and February 2003. Drimys winteri var. andina is totally different - looks like a small version of Drimys winteri. Drimys winteri var. andina comes as the name suggests from the Andes, whilst D. lanceolata harks from Tasmania. The only problem now, is that this mistake has been catalogued by Google making people think that D. lanceolata is D. winteri var. andina! This mistake has been corrected and hopefully Google will automatically correct this when it next spiders this site.

Eucryphia milliganii was stated to belong to the Rose family on the 'Plant of the Month' 2003 July page. It does not, it belongs to the Cunoniaceae or has been placed in the Eucryphiaceae and this family is in no way related to the Rosaceae. Many thanks to Steve who pointed this out. It illustrates how such mistakes occur and the problem of peer reviewing on the Internet. If any mistakes are noticed on this site (and I am sure there are many more) I hope people will point them out. If they do, as Steve kindly pointed out this quite serious one, I will be more than grateful.

Two Camellias (January 2006) have been removed from the lower section slope and transplanted to an area close to the bee hives. This illustrates the problem and is really a mistake to plant in inappropriate places. If I had really thought I would have not planted these where I did. They would obviously have grown into large bushes in a surprisingly short period of time and were beginning to that way after two years of growth. If the had been left where they were, this area full of spring flowers would have been badly affected. Hopefully now this area has appropriate planning. Lesson - before planting, think of the ultimate size of the plant - what space would this plant occupy in say 5 years time, 10 years time?

"I have never regretted our foolhardiness. Of course, we made mistakes, endless mistakes, but at least they were our own, just as the garden was our own." - Margery Fish - We made a garden.