SHARING SECRETS: Lessons Learned
- k-england
- Sep 30
- 8 min read
Edited by Cathy Tylka, for Let's Talk Plants! October 2025.
Current question:
Did you ever think a plant was named one thing and then find out you were wrong? Did you do something you thought would work and it failed? Did the failure turn into a win-win? Tell me about your errors in gardening!
Gerald D. Stewart of 92084 replied…
Errors in gardening. That pretty much describes my life, until Facebook's San Diego Gardener group. Again, thank you, thank you, thank you, Nan!
Here's an early error, going back to when I was in high school (many decades ago.) Mom wanted two dwarf pomegranate shrubs planted near a backyard fence. I planted the first one, but forgot to water it in with Vitamin B1. For the second one, I filled the hole with water and Vitamin B1, carefully put the plant in, and backfilled. Lesson learned: the one drenched in the Vitamin B1 solution quickly outpaced the one that got only water. I have used that lesson-learned ever since. Now I also add mycorrhizae to the solution. It was sad to learn that the gentleman who discovered how important mycorrhizae are to plant growth died recently. When I started my nursery in the late 1970s I added a scoop of Kellogg's Topper to each batch of soil made, figuring the composting process probably had beneficials that would be handy to have in the soil used for the houseplants I was growing. When the mycorrhizae information took the industry by a storm, I was glad I'd, ignorantly, added Topper to my soils. Nothing scientific about it, just a hunch. All from the error of not using Vitamin B1 on one plant and using it on the other. One of the benefits of being human is that we aren't perfect. The trick is to learn how to utilize errors to our advantage.
Susi Torre-Bueno, of 92083 shares…
... Over the nearly 70 years I've been gardening I've made a LOT of errors. One of the first was at the very start of my gardening saga, when we had a school garden in about 3rd grade in NYC. Our class grew radishes, and I was so excited about how very fast they grew. As soon as mine was the size of a cherry tomato I picked it, washed it off at a school water fountain, and took a big bite. Ugh - it did NOT taste at all like the cherry tomato it resembled, and to this day I'm not fond of radishes, but I was totally hooked on growing plants from seeds, and I decided to plant edibles that I actually liked. So that's a silver lining.
Many years later, around 1997, I visited the Vista Garden of SDHS founder Don Walker. He was growing a beautiful, variegated ground cover and I wanted a cutting for my own garden. Don warned me that it could be invasive, but I begged him for a piece and it took off like a rocket... and just kept on growing. Took me about 5 years until I finally eradicated it from the garden. I'm having a similar problem now with a plant, (Plectranthus neochilusvariegated form), that helps a little to repel gophers, but can take over an area in no time at all.
Editor's note: for me, in west Escondido, almost in Hidden Meadows, I have to grow this in a pot, but not overwater! -C.T.
Denise Stockman of 92083 responded…
... I was bit by the gardening bug when I was just 9 years old, so over the years I’ve definitely made my share of mistakes.
My most recent, OOPS! happened just a couple weeks ago. I decided to spray the weeds in the cracks along the driveway and sidewalk. I have two spray tanks, clearly labeled, one for pests and disease and the other for weeds. I picked up both to read my labels then headed out to spray. When I was putting the tank away I realized that I had the wrong sprayer!! I guess it’s safe to say that I don’t have bugs in my cracks and the weeds are thriving 🤣
Ida Rigby of 92064 postulates…
Errors: Of course, I am a gardener. There is the trail of uncounted dead plants.
I think we all try plants from a grandmother's garden (Chicago for me), which have so many memories; in this case pink phlox, which I mail ordered and of course almost immediately expired in the dry heat of Poway. Her portulaca in her rock garden grows splendidly, however. There are all of the bulbs that did not naturalize or even bloom, but I found a few narcissus, a tulip and daffodils that thrive here.
Now we have many relatively recent bulb introductions from South African and some natives.
So, the failures I'll mention are the terribly invasive plants that I rue the day I planted them. I planted what was supposed to be a clumping bamboo in our Kensington Garden; it invaded the whole backyard and was a contributing factor to our move to Poway for a fresh start.
When I started our Poway Garden in 1992 I wanted mostly natives. I thought a wild native rose (Rosa californica) would be lovely next to the dry creek bed in front; a terrible mistake. Hundreds of shoots come up each spring and run into the back garden. I read that the way to eliminate this rose is to clip shoots and pour weed killer into each stub. A non-starter. So, we just weed whack the shoots twice each spring. I planted some behind the concrete swale at the base of our hillside, thinking they would be contained by the depth of the swale; wrong, runners have crept under it and created a thorny jungle.
I read with interest that the Mexican petunia (Ruellia simplex) tolerated boggy as well as drought conditions so it seemed a perfect plant to put around the pond. Its runners are invading graveled areas near the pond, and when watered the seed pods catapult seeds 6 feet away, so it comes up in ever farther frontiers. It's listed as a Category 1 invasive plant in Florida. Then there is Mexican feather grass (Stipa tenuissima). Decades ago, I was bewitched by seeing a stand backlit and waving in the wind. After our dog snatched some and it got caught in his throat I vowed to remove it. Some 25 years later I still have a few little seedlings to get rid of and a few plants growing up the hillside where I do not venture due to rattlers. This colonization of an adjacent hillside is why it's now listed by Plant Right as "do not plant."
There is one potentially invasive plant, Mexican evening primrose (Oenothera speciosa), that I do love, but I do not recommend it for small gardens. It has spread through this colonization of an adjacent hillside and has spread throughout the garden and into the dry creek beds which is why it's now listed by Plant Right as "do not plant." In exchange for the beautiful month-long displays in the spring I am happy to spend hours sitting in the creek beds and removing the leftover dry stems.
Currently my mistakes are just not watering plants enough to get them started, but with this summer's perpetual heatwave (100 degrees in the shade on the patio for the last month and a high of 108), probably the norm, I am carefully evaluating any new plantings.
Planting roses 30 years ago was not a mistake, but I am ripping out recently planted ones as this summer was a real lesson in survival of the fittest as far as roses go. That said, I have some 30-year-olds, which I will water; they hunker down in the summer with minimal water and bloom gloriously in the spring.
I hope to learn from your “errors”; making errors comes with the territory for passionate horticulturalists/gardeners.
Editor's note: Thanks Ida, I’ve made a few of these same mistakes, and have eventually rid myself of them. -C.T.
Debra Lee Baldwin of 92026 correlates...
... Botanical nomenclature is not an exact science. As a garden photojournalist and author of books about succulents, it behooves me to get their names right. Apps and the Internet tend to be unreliable with anything that's uncommon. Complicating things is how Latin binomials change. This example is from a page on my site that includes a gallery of crested and monstrose succulents alongside their normal forms. In the caption I included both its old and new names: Echinopsis lageniformis (Trichocereus bridgesii) monstruosa. Imagine trying to remember either or both!
Karen England of 92084 has always felt ...
... like an imposter gardener, as her errors are multiple and make her feel undeserving of being the president of the San Diego Horticultural Society.
Years ago, her friend Dan Cannou, from the Vista Garden Club, explained a new gardening term to her called "driveway death" which is when you arrive home from the garden center with a car full of plants and you unload them to the driveway and then forget to water them before they get planted, i.e., driveway death.
What Dan was really trying to tell Karen was that we all have failures, it's just part of the process.
Cathy Tylka of 92026, okay, here goes,...
... some of the errors are mine, but more are Richard’s, my hubby.
He thinks a family garden can grow a variety of types of avocados, it does not. Also, we have a flat area garden, and avocados like a hill and they like water, but do not like their feet to remain wet.
As for me, I used to live in Encinitas, and there I planted a coastal plants, but now I live two to three different zones far away from that.
Agreeing with Ida, no evening primrose, invasive, with roots like carrots and must be eradicated for a long time. Also, I was told not to plant vinca minor. I am still digging it out of areas and have been for years.
Also, I must admit, I let my husband put in watering systems. I must improve on my decisions or hand water. Additionally, we have turtles, and they must not like what we have planted, and plants must not be poisonous. So, my decisions are dictated by these guidelines.
Additionally, an appeal to Ray Brooks who provided a wonderful staghorn fern for this past month’s meeting door prize and also for the Plant Forum.
Dear Ray,
Tell me again about how often you water the fern and about the environment you kept it in. I think I've got it down but I want to be sure because they have not survived where I live before. I’m in hidden Meadows in Escondido; the county. ~Cathy Tylka
By the way, the winner of the Hat Contest for the past three-month period is Lori Johansen. Anyone who provides an answer to the Sharing Secrets for the next three months is in the contest. Contact Karen info@sdhort.org to collect the prize.
Question for next month…
And by the way, thanks to Susi Torre-Bueno for suggesting this!
What are you doing in your garden to make things easier to maintain as you grow older and your knees/back/muscles don't cooperate as they used to?
