The 5 Plants I'll Never Put in Your Yard

I spend most of this site telling you what to plant. This page is the opposite. These are the five plants I won't put in your yard, no matter how good they look in somebody else's picture. Every one of them is everywhere in South Florida, which is exactly the problem. And every one of them has natives I'd rather hand you instead.

The default hedge of our entire coast, and the reason I started what I call the Anti-Clusia Movement. It's not a hedge, it's a tree in disguise, and it will spend its whole life trying to prove it. I wrote a full article on it and the 14 natives I plant instead, so I'll leave it at that here.

Same story, different costume. You're signing up for a shearing schedule forever, fighting a plant that wants to be something else. It's covered in the hedge article too.

The third member of the mainstream hedge lineup, and the third one covered in that same article. Planted for instant privacy, paid for in maintenance, forever.

This one's newer to the list. It looks like a palm, but it grows like bamboo. It clumps, it spreads, and it wants to be 40 to 50 feet tall. The leaves have tiny crystals in them that feel like fiberglass on your skin, so it's miserable to work around. It drops debris constantly. And somehow it keeps getting planted in the 6 feet between a pool and a house. I won't do it.

This is the one people push back on, because when it blooms, it's stunning. So here's what nobody tells you. Those picture-perfect bougainvilleas are on a constant diet of strong synthetic fertilizer and pesticides. That's what it takes, because there's a caterpillar that loves the leaves and will make an untreated plant look rough, and because bougainvillea honestly doesn't love our wet, humid summers. It wants dry, cool, and sunny. On top of that, it never stops growing. It's a vine and a shrub and a tree all at once, covered in long wooden spines. I work organically. I'm not going to douse a plant with chemicals to keep it pretty, so mine would never look like the ones you're picturing anyway. I could give you 50 more reasons, but that's enough.

One honest exception. There's a rare tree form called Bougainvillea arborea. Spineless, grows as an actual small tree, and I've planted it a handful of times as a specimen piece, that means a single showpiece plant. It's genuinely hard to find. If you fall down that hole, talk to me. The common bougainvillea at every garden center is still a no.

So that's the never list. Not because I hate pretty plants, but because I've watched every one of these turn into somebody's weekly headache, and my whole job is gardens that get easier with age, not harder. If you want the plants I'd choose instead, start with the native hedge article, or better, let's find the right plant for your exact spot. It starts with a consultation.