Amongst the other playstyles that I've figured out arent mine (sword and board, two-handed, full magery), I've decided to go back to my sneaky playstyle and decided to augment it with some Alchemy.

Problem is, I hate the whole harvest/hunt for ingredients part. I'd be walking down the road to Whiterun, and spend 80% of the time just checking each bush to see if its harvestable, and then when it comes to alchemy, waste it all with bad combines. Besides the obvious "cheat it in" mechanic, I'd like to do this as legitimately as possible.

So, anyone know any good harvesting hotspots for good poisons and potions?

If you're cool with thievery, I'd just steal from other alchemists.

The archmage's quarters in Winterhold has a small garden with a ton of different ingredients all growing in a very small area.

My first character (a mage) compulsively harvested ingredients, but the skill is just so damn slow to improve that I got put off by it. My current character (a warrior) is ignoring alchemy and it's a relief not to have to worry about harvesting crap everywhere.

I hate alchemy because picking flowers is incredibly tedious and time-consuming, and as you said, most of it goes to making crap to level the skill up. I wish all ingredients were semi-rare so that when you made something, it was always good and leveled you much more.

Trust me, as you keep exploring you will have a ton of ingredients to make all of your potions(just have somewhere to store them). In time you will learn to recognize what you need and ingredient picking won't be a chore.
But, if you want to find out for yourself the potions and poisons...then we can't give you locations and ingredients, because that would mean spoiling the fun for you.
So, I don't really understand...you want to discover on your own, or you want us to tell you what to get and where to get it?

http://uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Alchemy_Effects welcome

Er... you know that you discover effects by eating ingredients, right? So you don't really need to waste ingredients on mix and match experiments. Use the ones you know to level and buy recipes (which will then let you choose the right ingredients from the ingredients menu) and then through brewing you'll uncover secondary effects as well.

If you hate gathering, it may just not be the skill for you. Alchemy components are literally everywhere. Not all of them will be as useful for you as others, but alchemy also pays well especially at higher levels, and if you get the Speech perk which will allow you to sell potions to any merchant.