What kinds of plants are really hard to kill?

Kudzu!!!!

But really, ferns are absolutely unkillable.

@ladymia69 Yes, and I’ll purchase a few monkeys to add to the jungle vibe.

Are you wanting flowers or plants? A good hardy flower is impatiens. link

Hostas are ridiculously tough.

Mint. It will take over the world if not kept in check. I have some in a pot on my deck and I swear it’s coming for m…<gasp> <choke> ..mmmf…mmff…...

@chyna I want a mixture of flowers and plants.

@JilltheTooth I was speed reading your answer and read it as “I have some pot growing on my deck”.

@chyna : I’m not that blatant when I break the rules!

@chyna Pot is really very easy to kill.

Mint. Strawberries. Lemon Balm.

Bamboos and exotic grasses like Zebra grass and myscanthus. I love Zebra grass, it gets huge and fluffy and then dies back in the winter. Just leave it alone and cut back in spring.

Makes a nice privacy hedge too, although I don’t need privacy where I am. lol

If you plant things in “plant guilds”, which are groups of plants that naturally work together, then you’ll have a much harder time killing them. Look up some classic plant guilds and plant them near each other.

where do you live? What direction will your garden face?

Cacti are pretty hardy, need little water if any,

I think @incendiary_dan ‘s answer is very wise, actually.

@Judi I live in South Carolina. It will be facing East.

Yes @incendiary_dan too!

And, you can plant exotic grasses and smaller varieties of bamboos in large pots. I have several Zebra grasses in medium size ( 8–10 gal. ) pots on my deck if planting in the ground is too much work.

Also….if you’re into trees, I have a beautiful potted blue spruce with an amazing design to it. The tendrils are about 6 feet long now and it has thrived in a large pot for the last 3 years.

@Faze44 I’ve already killed a cactus before. I’m that horrible.

@Coloma That sounds beautiful!

@KatetheGreat ; I was looking at the hardiness zone map and it looks like South Carolina has quite a variety of zones. Once you figure out your zone from the map, you might be able to google “Hardy plants zone X” and get a bunch of ideas tailored to your area.

If you have a pretty shady, wet area Mint is really hard to kill. And it’s super delicious in things like fresh spring rolls and tabouli.

For more sunny and dry-ish areas, lavendar rosemary and sage are pretty hardy, smell fabulous and can be used for cooking.

Also for sunny and dry areas, most succulents and cacti do very well, because you don’t need to water them very often. But they don’t do well at all, in areas where it gets cold.

Oxalis does pretty well. It’s a pretty ground cover who’s leaves look like clovers and they have pretty pink or white flowers. We have it growing amongst grassy areas that are kind of patchy (the grass is patchy) and you can also grow it in a pot.

Mother in Law Tongue seems to be growing in every yard in California, so they must be pretty hardy. They look especially dramatic if you put them up next to a painted wall of a lighter color than the plants, like in this photo.

Morning Glory Vines must do very well, because when you see them, they are all over the place (usually on a fence or a trellis).

@KatetheGreat

At risk of sounding completely insane ( but hey, I’m the good kind of insane lol ) another ‘bonus’ with the exotic grasses is that they FEEL wonderful all over your body. haha

I get into the ‘exotic grass massage’ by moving my body around on them next to my hot tub. haha

Very sensual plants that come in handy when you are touch deprived. lol

@Coloma Haha, well I am not really interested in them for my pleasure. I’m just using the plants to make my apartment look a little better before I put it on the market and move away!

@KatetheGreat Then maybe don’t plant really hardy plants. If someone else is moving in, they may want different plants, and will rip out everything you’ve put in. Thing is, if it’s really hardy plants, like mint, that may be harder than just spending an afternoon ripping them out. Plus, it’s a ton of money to spend on something someone else may not like. It’s like remodeling the kitchen so the house will sell better – no matter what you do, the people who move in are going to want to make it look their own way, so don’t even bother.

Give us your gardening zone, the dimensions, the soil type, the amount of sunllght that hits the area; we can perhaps design a little garden for you.

(And also give us your budget and your ability to dig holes and lug gallon containers around.)

Flowers come in two varieties…perennials and annuals. Perennials, which return year after year, range from teeny little violas to six-foot tall meadow rue. Annuals, which bloom all summer long and then die, also range from teeny little violets to six-foot tall sunflowers.

I’m kind of in agreement with @MyNewtBoobs. Since you will be moving anyway, and the new owners may not want to have to contend with the hardy (and difficult to get rid of) plants, you should think about putting pretty plants and shrubs into pots, right before you start showing the house.

You could also lay out a small patch of sod and then put a walkway around that of decomposed gravel kind of like this. You can set the pretty pots right on the gravel.

You can have brightly colored flowers like Marigolds and Petunias and Geraniums and Nasturtiums and then take the plants with you, leave them at the house or give them to your friends and neighbors. These 4 flowers look really pretty and they’re pretty inexpensive. You can get inexpensive plastic pots that look like glazed ceramic at Big Lots.

@Kardamom That’s a good idea. Marigolds are pretty aggressive, but annuals, so if the new people don’t like them, they won’t have to deal with them beyond that summer.

Forget my idea about planning and planting a perennial garden.

Buy some huge terra-cotta colored huge pots, fill with good potting soil and plant annuals. Then take the pots with you.

Pay attention to color-scheme. Marigolds are a strident yellow or orange and will blend well with similar-hued nasturtiums. Geraniums in the light and hot pink and white family will do nicely with most petunias (not the red ones). Some useful greenery in the pots would be chives, parsley, mint or basil.

Or…if you really don’t want to invest much as you are selling, go to a local thrift store (s) and buy some fake, decent looking plants and just set them in the garden space for effect only. Garden staging. lol

@gailcalled beat me to my three suggestions. In all my life I have never killed a marigold, a nasturtium or a geranium. Another herb you might like to plant is thyme. Mine has come back, in a pot and through the winter on the deck, for the last two years.

Try researching native plants in your area. You wouldn’t be bringing in invasive species, and they would do well because they belong there.

If you really want a plant that is impossible to kill, get a Aspidistra Elatior. a.k.a: The Cast Iron Plant. Able to withstand, ‘dust, heat, cold, wet soil, drought, neglect and dimly lighted places…temperatures as low as 28 degrees..’.

Things we have tried—really tried—and failed to kill:

spearmint
Swiss chard
nasturtiums
calla lilies
bird-of-paradise
geraniums

Things that seem to thrive on benign neglect:
rosemary
star jasmine
most of the rest of what survives in our yard

Here’s a backyard using container gardens or this one in which they have used vegetables, but you could also use the flowers that we’ve all been talking about. These pots have been set out on a decomposed granite path like I mentioned earlier.

A bag of rocks, a few plastic pots, some flowers and maybe a square of sod. Easy!

Thank you all so much! I’ll let you know how my gardening adventures go!

Poor child, we done wore her out! lol

Something that has just even come up here to plant outdoors and I even have one indoors is a miniature banana tree, very very easy to grow and every one who comes here thinks its fake. I live in Rhode Island so I am sure you could get one to definately take down there.

There are some wonderful ideas here but I would forget the Aspidistra. It’s truly ugly and since you can’t kill it, it is yours forever. And it is essentially a house plant for a dark, cold,
Dickensian room.

(definitely)

@gailcalled Yikes! That plant sounds horrible, but now I have to check it out. I love that you described it as fitting into a Dickensian room, like a plant only Scrooge could love. LoL.

I had an Aspidistra that I was fond of (I sometimes think that ugly things have a special charm). My cat destroyed it.

Was this in your Cambridge basement apartment, speaking of Dickensian?

No, dear, it was in a lovely, sunny, large Cambridge apartment that was the whole first floor of a double-decker in a blue-collar neighborhood that has recently and suddenly gone yuppie. I moved there from the basement hovel, leaving that gothic refrigerator behind. I lived there until true love beckoned from California.

@gailcalled Ooo. So that’s the ugly plant my mother had in her house. Yep. Sounds about right…

Hogweed… but it’s toxic and causes blisters and blindness…trust me you will never get rid of it

Blackberry (bramble) bushes. My garden is over-run with the damn things, I’ve been trying to kill them for 22 years and the buggers keep coming back.

If you are not staying where you are, the easiest thing to do is get one of the roll_out flower beds that has a mat with the seeds included. Just roll out and water.

I never heard of that, @WestRiverrat. Have you used it? It does sound amazing.

What do you suppose happens if you have some of the roll left over and it gets wet?

The roll-out-flower bed is a good idea in theory, but usually works only when you lay it on a bed of enriched and decent porous soil. The roots need to establish themselves as in any good garden.

The concept is similar to that of a meadow garden. You can’t stand at the edge of a weedy field and broadcast a package of wildflower seeds and expect to get a glorious meadow garden.

@KatetheGreat hehehehe theres hope for you yet theres some great tips and responses, dont know if anyone else has said this tip but good soil equals good plants, companion planting is excellent too,I use down here in NZ for my summer vege garden:)