Then times changed, many of those gardens were no longer maintained, regular people found those nice plans & started passing seeds and planting them to their own gardens.
Turns out the nice plan comes right out of hell, prospers in European climate, if you cut it the sap is extremely caustic & will give you painful blisters from a single drop. If you survive cutting it down (in some places it creates impenetrable grooves) it just regrow ls from the root, multiple times.
So yeah, nice new plans showing up can cause a lot of fun. Well, at least as long as they don't walk its fine...