Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.  Especially in terms of planting the right plant in the wrong place.  

I took a drive this past fall around a neighborhood near our house and found many examples of beautiful plants that had been butchered in order to fit into a small area.  I spoke about this in an earlier post,  Read the Plant Label or You Might End Up With Cupcakes.  But, I have more pictures to share of what went wrong by those who did not read the label.

So, even though I do love to ‘talk’ – I think I will let the following pictures speak for me….

Planting the right plant in the wrong place, Oleanders

Opuntia

Rosemary and Pyracantha

Texas Sage ‘Green Cloud’

Agave

Red Bird-of-Paradise (Caesalpinia pulcherrima)

Bougainvillea ‘Torch Glow’

Okay, I’m breaking my silence now.

You may be wondering why I am including the photo above.  I took this photo of a client’s new landscape that they had just had designed and installed by a landscape company.  You can see that the bougainvillea fit nicely in this area.  Well, that was then…..what the homeowner did not realize, (until I told him), is that this shrub will grow 6 ft. high and wide.  The area it was planted in was 1 ft. wide and located by the front entry.  In addition, they did not take into account that bougainvillea have thorns, which would scratch people as they passed by this shrub as it grew outside of the planting boundary.

So, wherever you live….whether in England, China, South Africa, Australia and especially in Arizona – please, please read the plant label before buying a plant to see how large it will grow.