shell wrote:holly, as i have just bought one for the garden,only to find there are male and female and i need both for the berries,i then looked up blue maid which is the type of holly i have and i find its a hybrid so i don`t need 2 after all,before that i looked up gunnera as i had just put one in my back garden to help with the wet soil,i find its a pest in Galway and they have a page about ridding it from the county as its not wanted,ugh now i`m thinking about asking hubby to dig it up again
other than that the info on my other plants have been brilliant,

Shell, I've got 3 x 15ft holly trees that have to go - by any means, they HAVE to go!! I don't know about male & female, but I know they're thick with berries right now! They're also 2 foot away from the back rooms - leaving the kitchen/diner very much in the shade
As for the Gunnera, well, I've always wanted a big enough garden to have a gunnera patch... so I'm planning on a trip to the Headford Road nursery - they have some crackers in there!
Yes, they ARE a big problem in Galway, but the garden centres are still selling it, so I guess it's still ok to buy it!
I also think that the variety you get in the nurseries are different to the gunnera weed that's growing in abundance on the N63! I could be wrong of course.... but I'm still getting some for our side bank
Julie.