How to deal with nuisance plants

[CurlyhairedAssassin]

Where do I start when tidying my neglected borders up?

I've spent 3 years looking at things taking over and just buried myhead in the sand.

My mum, bless her, thought she was doing a favour a few years ago when funds were short, and gave me some plants which turned out to be buggers for spreading fast and being uncontrollable. I also have the usual stuff like ivy and brambles. I can't keep up with it, I work full time and need to get rid of this type of plant and replace with hardy perennial shrubs and fill gaps with bedding plants, I think. I am a fair weather gardener with very little time to garden.

These are the pain in the arse plants. Can someone advise me on the easiest way to get rid of them all? There are just so many of them.

Hypericum/St John's Wort: this is evil, so difficult to remove as spreads underground. It fills one side of the garden along the whole border.

Euphorbia: a couple given to me by mum have spread along the same border as the hypericum. I'm in 2 minds whether to keep a few as they are pretty in early spring or get rid of the lot as I think they'd be a pain to keep on top of?

Solidago: god, this stuff is everywhere. The bees love it and it looks pretty but it has to go, I don't think I can deal with the upkeep. Roots seem very strong and spreads under ground, how can I be rid of it permanently?

Same with Inula Hookeri. Insects love them but spread underground

I also have some other v tall yellow plants that may be something like helianthus maximiliani. I asked my aunty for some of hers and she did warn me they spread quickly, but did I listen?! These are a total bastard. Roots are so tough to dig up, and they have invaded everything in both front and back garden, I can't even see the crocosmia patch they've trampled through. THey're even coming up through the tarmac path, damaging it.

Finally there is a lonicera japonica which is strangling stuff everywhere, having invaded from next door. (he is retired, does loads of gardening and realised it was a bugger and dug it up from his side but it was too established into my side and grows a few inches a day I'm sure, strangling some plants and kiilling them.

I guess, I want the quickest fix possible as I am time poor and I can't keep up with the growth and spread. How do I get rid of all these plants quickly and for good?

@curlyhairedassasin...well, glyphosate (you don't have to buy Roundup which is the branded one). I agree with you about hypericum. It self seeds everywhere in our garden, is difficult to dig up and it has a nasty smell too. I'm gradually eradicating it though.

Rope in your mum and get her to help you?

Doesnt sound all that bad.
Trim the honeysuckle, give it something to climb on.
You can easily pull up the goldenrod, push a weeding tool into the roots to lever them up. I find it easier when the soil is dry. Leave a few for the bees.
The rest will be done bit by bit. It’s probably easier to weed the St Johns Wort runners in the Autumn when the ground is wet. So give it time, it takes years to make a garden.

Getting rid of those plants isn’t the problem. Surely the question is what you put there instead? What are your options? Grass? Paving?

That Euphorbia isn't so hard to control - it spreads but a few minutes with a fork and you'll get a lot up. Careful with the white sap though as it's an irritant. Personally I love it, it lights up a hot dry section in the spring. So I put up with the spreading and just trim it back every now and then ;)

For the whole garden, cut all weed foliage regularly-ish. Remove before seeds set.

Little by little do a full clear of a patch. Dig over and remove roots. If you have particularly bad weeds (ground elder..) then dig up perennials and wash the roots.

Cover that patch with ground cover with holes for the plants. After a few months lift it and remove any new growth. If anything else peeps out then I’d get the glysophate out then but not before.

Weeding can be a nice job to do when meditating or praying if it feels like a chore.

Music or a podcast helps me. But it does depend what results you are expecting. If you want to scale back a plant (bramble, a weed like elder or a plant like euphorbia) if you just for instance, strim it or mow it. It won't look great for a while. But if that is what you have time for, that is ok. This is your garden, your life. If your life isn’t about having a perfect border right now, that’s ok. The land will still be there when you are ready to have perfect borders.

I have more garden than I can cope with I and I have covered one difficult patch with cardboard and I’m not going to look at it for a while. I will sit for drinks somewhere else. My side of the street we have old houses and large gardens that are all rather rough and ready. The other side of the street is modern houses with small immaculate gardens. I am lucky that I have a large garden and busy job and family but that means I can’t have immaculate.

@Iamnotmad: how are you dealing with the hypericum? do you just keep putting glyphosate on it? or just digging it up as it appears?

@greengauges Many reasons why my mum can't help me. She is 70 with bad knees, she can just about manage bits in her own garden along with the gardener's help, she is shielding as on chemotherapy, and even if she were well enough technically she shouldn't be coming here anyway. When she gave me the stuff she had good intentions, it was to fill gaps when I wasn't working when kids were little and had no money to buy plants. It's just all got out of hand since I went back to work full time. DH doesn't have time either.

@stella1know: I'll try digging up nearly all the golden rod if you reckno it's not too bad when the soil is dry and leave the st john's wort till the autumn, then, thanks. The honeysuckle has plenty to climb on, I'm not exagerrating when I say it's run rampant all thorugh everything in the whole border and has killed some plants by strangling. I now can't reach some of it as it's through tall prickly shrubs. It really is awful and is classed as an invasive species in N America, I think.

@OneEpisode: therein lies my problem. I LIKE to have plants, I get pleasure out of looking at them and seeing them change with the seasons. It's only a smallish garden (rectangular, with 3 borders - very boring and suburban!), I would like to keep the borders with colour and greenery in, and not just grass it up to the fence.

@WobblyLondoner: re the euphorbia, I also read last night that they actually produce seed which I never realised, and that you're supposed to take the flowery bits off when they turn brown. So now I know that perhaps I can keep more control of them. I agree with you they are pretty when there's not much else blooming. Will see if I can get the excess ones up too.

@peajotter: when you say put down ground cover with holes, do you mean that black material weed membrane stuff? We have done that in the past for one section and it worked well till it rotted down, and then we never replaced it thinking that was it, and everything just gradually grew back.

I think it's clear that my main problem is probably procrastination! I go out and hang stuff on the line and have a good wander round and think "oh that needs doing, and that needs doing" making a mental tick list, and then I just don't seem to get round to doing it as I'll go inside and do household jobs instead, thinking I'll get to the garden later. The worst thing was having an extension done - that was a whole summer with no gardening,and things went rampant and then it seemed just too big a job so we buried out heads in the sand and ignored it all!

I do see that I need to deadhead seeds and cut back weed foliage no matter what though. No good ignoring it.

@OneEpisode: Yes, I think that's a good tactic to deal with procrastination of dealing with problems fully all at once. If I can manage to cut a bramble off in 2 mins at the point it comes out of the soil rather than look at it thinkign "oh yes, I need to get that up" and leaving it for weeks then that would help a lot, I reckon. Good suggestion.

And you're right, not sure it's possible to have "immaculate". Not if you want interesting plants and wildlife in it, but you work full time. I dn't mind a bit messy but it's the "got completely out of hand" aspect I struggle with. But yes, bit by bit is the thing. I don' thtink lockdown has helped. Everyone in the area seems to have loads of free time to garden all day whereas I am working from home and home schooling my year 9 and donig ALL the housework as DH's hours are ridiculous.

So yes, expectations need to be lowered, I think, but more effort put in combined with a little less procrastination

Thanks everyone for your input!

If you chip away at it bit by bit, and you are doing it a little faster than things are growing, then eventually you will get on top of it.

The other alternative is to completely do one small section. Then it will be easy to keep that one little bit under control while you move on to the next small section.

Do you want an immaculate garden? Immaculate gardens are bland, boring wildlife deserts and, in my view, all gardens should have room for wild flowers, lawns which have daisies, clover and other beautiful 'wild' species growing amongst the grass, rather than looking like centre court at Wimbledon. And don't get me started on hedges manicured to perfection - the buzz, hum and whine of hedgetrimmers being wielded by over zealous 'gardeners' all through spring and summer when birds are nesting is very distressing...

Sorry OP, just reread my post and realised that you might think I am having a 'dig' at you - I am not, really. I just have a view, purely subjective and personal of course, about what constitutes a garden, as opposed to a designer outdoor space. Each to their own, but gardens with regimented rows of bedding plants, bowling green lawns and little room for wildlife are anathema to me personally. But the hedges thing - well, I think it should be unlawful to cut domestic hedges from March to August, as it is for farmers, our birds are in enough trouble as it is, without it being compounded by thoughtless destruction of their nesting habitat, in the name of 'tidiness'

I find it helps to spend 15 or 20 minutes doing whatever seems most urgent at the time.

It's a difficult time of year. Up to the beginning of May I always think "maybe this is the year where I'll keep up with all the jobs". And then in May everything bursts into growth.

As to dead heading/weeding - one suggestion I've seen is to have terracotta pots or similarly attractive containers dotted around the garden so you can drop weeds and seed heads in. A lot easier to do than if you have to carry them around the garden with you and find somewhere to dispose of them.

It really is awful and is classed as an invasive species in N America, I think. A lot of things are invasive in the US which we regard as desirable plants. Just as some of our invasives are perfectly well behaved in their countries of origin.

The pots round the garden to drop weeds etc into as you pass is genius - the best ideas are often the most simple. I'm going to do that. Thanks!

If you have got the time and the strength at the moment, dig up anything you're sure you want to get rid of, label it and put it by your front gate with a sign saying "free plants, help yourself". Over the last few weeks, I've given away loads of plants that way - many people are using lockdown to revamp their gardens and welcome freebies!

If it is really bad, you could get a battery strimmer and obliterate the top growth then mulch over those areas either with wet cardboard and some sort of loose mulch such as rotted horse poo, grass clippings and wood chip or garden compost or cover in weed membrane and leave for twelve months. You can plant in the former and any regrowth is easier to pull up. Ditto if you lift the membrane after twelve months the weakened growth can be much more easily pulled out. Any plants you want to save can be moved to holding area. You can try this in sections too or combine with the other approaches according to where the problem is worst.

@CurlyhairedAssassin, I cut all the top growth down to a stump and apply glyphosate to the freshly cut stump where it is absorbed. You could pm me for my exact method. I am not really advocating for chemicals by doing this but I do detest this invasive plant and it's a last resort that has worked for me. Make sure you wear gloves and that the glyphosate doesn't end up where you don't want it. I use old cardboard boxes to screen other plants/surrounding soil

At this time of year everything is growing like mad - why don't you wait until the winter, say November, when they've died back and should be easier to dig up.
You could apply weed killer at the end of the summer then go for them.

I use a mattock as I have rocky soil and spades don't really work.
I wouldn't attempt digging up any shrub without going right round it with a mattock first, which will break off the roots.

Will give it a go, @Iamnotmad, thanks!

As for the mattock, I have never heard of that and don’t even really know how to use a hoe so not sure it’d be any good to me

Don't let the hypericum flower or go seed. Chop the flowers/seedheads off as soon as you can