You'll wish you had never planted.....You'll be so glad you

it's odd how invasives in one place are treasures in another.
I guess it's a variation of one man's (gardener's) trash is another man's (gardener's) treasure.

What are weeds in some regions may be just marginal in other regions - hence desirable plants for some gardeners and a formidable foe for others.

Not sure I'd say crepe myrtles (or Japanese maples) are invasive in the Atlanta area - they do volunteer from seeds but not that much and if they do, then cut them down before they get a chance to get roots deep in the ground (almost impossible to kill once they are a year or two old).

Sweet Autumn Clematis - yes very weedy in the Atlanta area.

Chameleon plant is not weedy by seeds like S.A. Clematis but it does run amok and very difficult to get rid of (I agree with Pirl on this weed). I'd recommend keeping it in a container if you must have it.

I allow some maypops to grow but spray a bunch of them to keep them in check.

Another tough weed to get rid of are the wild violets which DonnaMack expounded on earlier (pretty when blooming, a nightmare after that). If they get into a lawn, then they are almost impossible to get rid of without digging up the entire lawn.

Yes, the blasted violets. They mow down and strangle other plants, which is why they are so awful. Despite being as organic as possible, I went to my garden center and asked for something to knock them back, along with their buddies creeping charlie. They gave me some stuff and told me to use it two or three times. Then, in fall, I manually dug out a bunch of it in my back yard, and put in its place campanula takesimana 'Bellringers', which is a plant so pushy that I had three in the front of my yard and had to divide them all to control them. I put five of them where the violets and creeping charlie had been. Then I put in my "reject peonies". You know, the ones that you are sent in error and don't like or the weak performers.

Then I started going all around other parts of my yard and using a dandelion digger, but no chemicals, to get them out. I must have spent two hours that day throwing them into black garbage bags. Oddly satisfying.

The funny part is that I thought they were pretty and deliberately moved some to the front under a tree. The tree was a Bradford pear that had to be removed. That took care of many of them, but you have to watch the little devils. They try to get into my flower beds in the front and I have to be relentless.

The barren strawberries are next. Red and white. At first I didn't mind them, but they are spreading. War!

I found a simple application of lime really cuts back on the violets. I like the violets so don't ever lime in some wilder areas of the "lawn".

The barren strawberries and a seeming grass have really taken over a lot of areas. There's another weed that's relatively new has been gaining ground too - its a runner with spikey yellow flowers and crinkly green leaves. But I didn't plant any of these myself!

Hi, everyone.

I am currently battling one of the worst invasives I have ever had the pleasure of attempting to eradicate. I am talking about the root beer plant (piper auritum). Here in South Florida, they grow year-round, whether you fertilize them or not, whether you water them or not. The more you dig, the more comes out, farther and farther away from the mother plant. Left unchecked they grow to 8 or 9 feet tall, with leaves 12 inches across. I get an odd satisfaction digging them out of the ground. They seem to be immune to Round-Up.

I think I'll go report it as a negative in Plant Files.

Sylvain.

Hey, Sylvain. I purchased Hoja Santa from one the most esteemed nurseries in all of Dallas. Apparently, they didn't know anymore about it than I did. It now "owns" what at one time was a bed of Iris and Daylilies.......no more....choked them out. One day the yard crew was here and one of the young men got all excited when he saw these plants. Told me he had purchased some just that weekend at the Mexican Market for.........drum roll......$17.00 per pound. I offered him all he could carry and all of the root plants he wanted.


I also have the wild violets......having mistakenly planted them myself when we first purchased this home in 1967. Just guess how long I have been battling them and who is winning!

This message was edited Mar 4, 2015 1:18 AM

And after you spray, dig. And put in a plant that is pushy but not horrible where they were. I used Campanula takesimana 'Bellringers'.

http://www.bluestoneperennials.com/CATB.html?id=PqEYKZTb

Assertive enough so that I had to divide them in the second year. Perfect!

The violets and creeping charlie in the five foot area are gone! Yes!

I had S.A. Clematis for about 3 years and noticed it's aggressive habit and pulled it out. It came back for another 3 years but is gone now.
I am very careful to watch for aggressive plants. I don't have the energy to fight them. I research every plant before I put any in my garden. If the description says spreads by stolens or rhisomes, I decline. I only get something like that after I have asked my DG friends their experiences.
Ornithllogalum umbellatum 'Star of Bethlehem' is my current nemesis. I brought it from my mother's garden along with Physotegia virginianica 'Obedient Plant' which btw, wasn't obedient at all. I noticed it had taking ways and got rid of it. I also got rid of mint by filtering the roots which had grown through my buried pot through my fingers and dug up every Lily of the Valley. These plants were my LESSONS to research every plant before putting them in my gardens.
Now, I still have to dig out the Ornithilogatum u. I dig down 12 inches and if you aren't careful, the slim stem breaks off from the bulb, and the 12 inches of digging was useless. It's like wild onion to me.
I know some plants are well behaved in one area while onery in another. I do wish people that sold plants would give the ENTIRE story, and then, consumers can make an educated decision.
I've read many description of plants, and there's no mention of it being possibly invasive.
Calgary Pear is becoming an invasive in this area. They cross pollinate with the Bradford Pear. They have thorns and are choking out the native trees.

Once again a plant that works perfectly for me: the Ornithogalum may be everywhere in my dad's lawn, but it stays there in the grass - which is fine with me, I never liked plain grass anyway.

I find that the worst plants come from people who have an invasive and control it by dividing it and giving it to YOU! I have heard about people boasting about it. I was doing my Master Gardener thing at the time. A person who was a Master Gardener too told me she routinely did this. She had a smirk on her face. I told her she should be slapped.

Some idiot gave a garden client of mine tons of ditchlilies. They multiplied like mad, and wow they were ugly. This is a friend? Better yet, do you know how you get rid of them? You have to dig them out by hand, which was what I had to do. Roundup doesn't work. It took weeks, and it was backbreaking.

Somebody offered me "obedient plant". Said it was great and I would love it. I turned to her and asked, "what's the deal? Don't you like me?" She had the grace to blush.

There are actually people who would turn up on my property with a box full of some plant they had offered me and I had declined. I would smile, accept the box, then take a run past their properties, where I would see tons of whatever plant it was (blackberry lily is one). Then I'll go home and possibly pot it (blackberry lily is very nice in a pot) or throw it out.

This message was edited Mar 4, 2015 1:19 AM

Blooma, those flowers look so innocent! and Pretty.
I planted the Geranium s. on my hill to hold soil. It's the space between "wild" and lawn. I think it will be okay there? What's the vote? I planted it just last year so will not be hard to eradicate now. It's native here in Mo. Like I said, I am pretty gun shy when I hear about a plant possibly being aggressive.

I'm going to climb on my soap box once more. Our conservation dept. along with the MG puts on a Grow Native seminar every year. I think that's fine, but again, I think they need to tell people that some of these "natives" can grow rampant in a small yard-not acres and acres for it to ramble--even if the butterflies like it. :).

Birder, I'm ready to climb on that soapbox with you! Common milkweed is incredibly invasive. I was willing to give it some latitude until it started popping up everywhere and bringing the milkweed beetle with it.

A friend gave me a bunch of geranium roberianum, I wrote about it here, and was informed that it is both invasive and smelly. So I pulled it all. But she also gave me geranium 'Bevan's Varirty', nepeta 'Joanna Reed' and 'Six Hills Giant', which are amongst my favorite plants and added a wonderful quality to my garden.

Agree that Common Milkweed is aggressive. I grow about a dozen Asclepias species, but carefully avoid that one.

Some individuals I have met are very straightforward about the advantages and disadvantages of native plants. I had lots of the good ones, the cornus alternafolia and baptisia being amongst my favorites. Chasmanthium latifolium is a great sun or shade plant - except that it seeds like mad, so although I have several, I never recommend it. It would really be helpful if people who are truly interested in native plants would be a little more forthcoming about the problems. In my former community (which was a conservation community, although I had to fight them to seed my parkway and easement because they wanted to sod it - and I lost that battle!) people from a certain organization that will remain nameless would come to my yard, point out non-native plants and preach. And some of the plants they promoted were highly invasive - perfect for the prairies they were recreating but hopeless for private gardens.

Does anyone know anything abt akebia chocolate vine? I need something to cover my pergola. I am zone 5 most of time...lol

Sweet autumn clematis i cut to the ground after blooming and didnt find one volunteer this year.

In zone 8 it is very invasive. If Confederate Jasmine will grow in your area, I recommend that.

Well nix that idea. I thought I had looked up Confederate jasmine and it was only zone 8. I couldn't find any zone 5. I would be in seventh heaven with that! Looked on amazon and all zoned to high for here.

How big is your pergola? Can you do something like a jackmanii clematis? Or if you don't mind pushing seeds in the ground in the spring, perhaps a hyacinth bean vine?

Do not grow akebia! It has traveled thirty feet down my fencelines, under six foot wide poured walkways, and fifteen feet under dark decks only to come up and look for footholds in the wood siding. It is wisteria in drag. We spend several days every year untangling it from our azaleas and other desireable landscsping. All because I wanted a vine growing up a stone column with a light.

I wish I had discouraged adenophora. Three years ago when I moved to my new home there were perhaps ten plants, and I found them charming. Last year, 50. This year - hundreds! And since I am now filling in nicely with my own plants, they are simply a nuisance. I can't find any way to get rid of them other than pulling them up and turning the soil, but there seem to be plenty to take their places!!!

It's not adenophora, it's campanula rapunculoides. Evil plant. I have two neighbors who don't take care of their yards and it comes under their blasted chain link fences. It has strings and a tuber, and you have to get the tuber or it spreads across the yard into all of your plants. It creates monocultures. I have started digging a trench around my property. When I look in their yards I see tons of it, just over the fence, along with creeping charlie, lily of the valley and violets. Makes you want to throw a bomb. I have spent hundreds of hours removing it.

This message was edited May 8, 2017 5:53 AM

Talked me out of it.....it is tiny so I think it is going in the trash.

@Happgarden...if you change your mind later I'll ship you a truck load for cost. Make sure you have all the roots out.

Another bad boy is trumpet vine. I rue the day I planted that against a rustic fence at the back of the garden. It's growing on a granite mountainside in a rock bed. It travels underground for dozens of feet and pops up in the vegetable garden. I have to dig out roots weekly. Unfortunately any garden cultivation breaks the roots and further spreads this nasty plant. BTW, the vine is about 4" at its lower portion and is twisting and splitting the boards on the fence.

It is true that as a Miami native I had never seen violets until I moved to GA. I thought it was amazing how people could plant them in their lawns and they grew and grew. What with those lovely flowers who would not want a lawn full? I was a novice gardener with my first Burpee catalog in hand when I ordered not just one dozen, but two dozen violets to inter-plant in our lawn. Well, all I can say is we don't live in that house anymore. lol

Another gardening gaffe was back in the seventies when I was a Mother Earth News subscriber. You had to have Jerusalem artichokes because of the beautiful sunflowers and edible roots. I planted them along a fence line in the front yard. The house was a tiny bungalow and I had a square foot garden. Those artichokes grew around twelve feet high and then started falling all over the lawn. The following year they were growing in the lawn. By the third year I was so sick of Jerusalem artichokes I never wanted to eat or see one again and I haven't.

Adenophora is definitely a thug! I was able to rid it from one flower bed but not in another. I have big shrubs, peony and a lot of big perennials so it just sneaks around and blooms when I'm not watching. Charming flower but wow what a thug! And I started mine from seed. :-(

Laurel - my brother is ruing the day he planted trumpet vine. Mine seems fairly well behaved at the corner of my barn. We whack it back hard every year so it won't eat the solar panels. And the hummers love it.

Some of the passion flowers are very invasive. Our native one here P. incarnata just goes anywhere it wants to. In the fields it can be a real pest. I grow it in pots, but put something under the pots so the roots can't sneak out the holes in the pot and sneak away. I also have a red one that has sneaked out of the pot and returned in 2 different places this year.

OK. I neglected to say that my trumpet vine is in fierce competition for that corner of the barn with a passion vine (P. incarnata, from seed I started). It pops up 10' from the barn but I can mow it and its pretty well constrained by the terrain.

I've had a few "bad boys". I learned my lesson to do research before buying a plant that's unfamiliar no matter how pretty and enticing it is. There's "trigger" words too-spreads, rapid, groundcover, vigorous, grows sun and shade, clay and loam, re-seeds, especially "spreads by rhizomes" seems scary to me!
Vendors should be up front about these plants. I'm sure they have their place in some areas---just not mine!!
Also, if you are buying seed, and they are willing to sell you a boat load of it sounds an alarm for me.

Yep. The other red flag is a neighbor offering a ton of "extra" plants. That's how evening primroses made it into the garden at my last house. Pretty but very persistent. I'm extremely careful now. That passion vine was a mistake before it was so easy to look up plants on the internet..

The maypops pop up in my garden on schedule every year. Thus the name of our cottage and property, Maypop, and why I am MaypopLaurel. Those horizontal runners do tend to wander but they pull out easily in cultivated soil so I give them a designated place to climb and pull the wanderers. The bumble bees adore them, getting so intoxicated they fall out of the flowers. We have wild evening primrose on the steep bank below the veggie garden. They get big but pull out easily if they encroach. I like the lemon smell that fills the air. They help retain the banks. We also have lots of wild milkweed on the banks and in our old pasture. I've read that the intentional eradication of wild milkweed is a primary reason for the decline in Monarch populations.

I don't think milkweed would ever be considered invasive. Is It? At least not that I have ever seen.

In their posts above, DonnaMack and Greenthumb sound like they are not fans of milkweed. I was recently reading about the decline of Monarchs and the aggressive eradication of milkweed on agricultural fields in the U.S.. As for us, milkweed continues to spread in our old abandoned horse pasture. We wait 'til later in the season to bush hog. I like the way it looks.

I stopped by the side of the road and gathered rose campion seed years ago, scattering it on those difficult embankments at Maypop. It has spread across the steep slopes and blooms for almost two months. It comes up in the poor excuse for a lawn below where I either pull it or mow around it. It hasn't shown up anywhere else.

Maypop was an abandoned property on a mountainside. The stepped grading was done by a lunatic with heavy equipment. The original owner planted ditch lilies and common iris. The lilies are a spreading pain but without them we'd have aweful gashes in our mountain.

I'm fine with Milkweed, and definitely promote its planting. However, the standard home garden is not an ideal location for Common Milkweed, Asclepias syriaca due to its aggressive spreading. It is more for fields, fence rows and large open/disturbed areas. I do grow 8 or 10 other native Asclepias species in our gardens. Examples:

A. exaltata
A, incarnata
A. perennis
A. purpurascens
A. tuberosa

Asclepias syriaca spreads like wildfire and worse, rather than attracting butterflies it attracted the milkweed beetle. I tried to grow some of the other milkweeds years ago, but they don't like our soil.

Instead, I did a lot of research on other plants. And started growing lots of eupatorium, a nectar plant I like very much. And not a cultivar - the native. And despite my dislike of purple coneflowers, I allow the ones that were in the garden when I arrived remain.

There are alternatives to milkweed. I think one of the problems with getting people to grow plants that attract monarchs is that many people who do care are instructed to grow plants they can't grow, don't like, or both. A lot of people think that eupatorium is too big. I'm lucky. I became a master gardener in my state two years ago, and one of my volunteer tasks is to help maintain a prairie garden and a rain garden. And my mentor is the very first master gardener in my county. So I get a lot of exposure to pollinator plants. Which I needed, because I was growing lots of nectar plants, attracting tons of butterflies and hummingbirds, but I didn't quite understand that pollinator plants were needed too.

So I grow both!

Milkweeds, Asclepias species, are the ONLY food source for Monarch larva (caterpillars). For producing new Monarchs, there are no alternatives. Monarch adults will feed on the nectar of a wide range of plants.

Oh, well...

Asclepias has a bad name because many think all of them are big re-seeders. I have had Asclepias tuberosa for many years now. It has produced 4 plants. It's very well behaved and has a tidy presentation. It's blooming now with my Kniphofia and Gallardia. It looks very nice. It supposedly does not like to be transplanted due to its taproot. I have moved mine around, and they don't even blink. It's a tough plant that requires no care once established. They are late emerging in Spring so don't panic and think it's not returning. In addition to being a favorite of butterflies, especially the Monarch, it's a nice plant to have in your garden.
I really like it and highly recommend it.

tt is Common Milkweed, Asclepias syriaca that gives Milkweed a bad name, primarily because the root system has long creeping rhizomes that result in the aggressive vegetative spread of this plant.

Thanks greenthumb99. I knew there was one or more that were pretty aggressive. I didn't know which one/s however.

I had no idea there was a dislike of milkweed. The primary one I see in the wild here is A. tuberosa, and I can vouch for it being almost impossible to move as a mature plant. It is certainly not an aggressive spreader. There seems to be a lot of seed but very few germinate without the help of being planted in a pot or flat.
In Hawaii I saw some strange looking pods on a plant in a pasture (with some zebras and other African animals). They turned out to be Asclepias and as I remember were somewhat invasive. The pods appeared prickly. I have forgotten the name of it now...