Thugs..you know you’ve got them

[Quarks69]

And now is the time to dig them up, but I always feel bad about killing any plants and I keep leaving it. At the moment I am thinking I should dig up acanthus mollis, bear breeches, as it keeps popping up in other parts of my bed. Deep rhizomes. Has anyone successfully kept this under control?

And any other thug stories... my garden is home to too many of them creeping across their boundaries!

Your post made me laugh! When I first started gardening I bought some acanthus mollis because I loved the shape and drama of it. Then I sat down and looked it up in my book properly and saw how big it was likely to grow. I’m a kind person, normally, but when I noticed that the acanthus wasnt doing so well, and was in fact on its last legs, I rejoiced, quietly........

Other thugs I have willingly and ignorantly planted.

Ivy, I bought about five speciality ivys, all the small pretty ones with crinkly variegated leaves were quickly overwhelmed by the healthy thugs who then rampaged.unchecked ivy stems can grow to the size of a small shrub, or even a good sized shrub.

Sweet woodruff, told it was good ground cover. Thankyou lady at Eden Croft Herbs, too right it is, and I’ll remember to plant some again if ever I need to regreen a small area of tundra.

Jasmine, actually I love it, though the neighbours on that side don’t for some reason, it does need a very firm hand though it always bounces back (and smells so amazing on a hot summers evening when the back doors are open.....)

Angelica, another one where I didn’t read the description carefully enough.

Euphorbia, every seed a grower.

Ditto evening primrose.

But it’s all experience. And it’s not my fault I have a low plant buying threshold.

Alchemilla mollis - seeds itself everywhere and is the devil to uproot.

Carex pendula, Pendulous sedge. Grass-like leaves about 2 ft long, long arching stems with pendulous flower heads - looks lovely, but self seeds everywhere.

Boston ivy - a house wall clothed in bright red leaves in autumn looks lovely - except that once established, even if you cut it down to ground level every winter, it'll be up to first floor windows and beyond by the end of the season and I really don't want to let it get to gutters and slates.

Lonicera henryii - evergreen honeysuckle, subtle peach flushed purple flowers followed by black berries. Except that, despite having saw through and removed a trunk 6 inches thick, it's still sending up trailers over a 30ft stretch of fence and threatening to kill a 50 years old bramley apple tree.

Kiftsgate rose - I though planting it in the shade in a frequently waterlogged corner of the garden would clip its wings a bit, but no, it's now 4 trees away from where it started, and my task this winter is to crawl under a holly tree and cut it off at its base.

Bindweed and brambles are trivial problems by comparison.

Another I forgot - snowberry - suckers like fury and is beginning to be invasive in the wild.

Do they wear DMs and braces?

The slugs and snails in my garden have to be seen to be believed.

The previous owners of my house planted 4 wisteria in the small garden, and never pruned it. The plus side is that now I’ve got rid of most of it, the garden is twice the size I thought!

Also the passionflower that sends up shoots everywhere, and produces technically edible but revolting fruit, while taking up the one really warm and sunny spot in the garden.

And good luck Meredint with the holly bush/rose (spectacularly spiky combination!)

Oh how I hate Lungwort, even it's name is awful. DP hates it too & keeps asking me to banish it, if only it was that simple. It's everywhere, impossible to kill. I also had a long battle digging out acanthus, 3 yrs on, it's still fighting to make a comeback.

😂 your stories are just so funny..because they are so true! @viques the sweet woodruff, omg I even bought 3 little pots initiallly to make sure it covered quicker. Now it’s is like a blanket. I’m just hoping it makes it under the fence to my neighbours garden, to make up for the killer bamboo escaped from their ‘Thai garden’!

@MereDintofPandiculation I am nurturing my freebie snowberry that popped up unexpectedly in a back bed. Wondering how long I can appreciate it before armageddon?

I was excited when I moved in and there was a huge beautiful oriental poppy in the border. The next year I noticed that it is mahoosive and only flowers for a very short time, then begins to look awful. I tried to dig it out, and this year there are dozens of little ones popping up all over the area. I'm not sure I'll ever be rid of it.

Also red valerian, alchemilla Mollis, aquilegia, marjoram - all beautiful but self seed everywhere abs impossible to remove once their deep roots take proper hold.

I'll add crocosmia to that list. And until we had to have the house underpinned we regularly had passionflower shoots creeping up a bookcase in the dining room. It hasn't reappeared; a very expensive way to get rid of the problem though!

Oh and the ivy I bought from a school fair for 50p a pot; I didn't know what to do with it so put it in a bit of spare ground next to the house. I turned my back on it for a year or three to find it had got under the roof tiles and also bent a gas pipe. That was the very devil to get rid of, and we had to have part of the wall re-rendered.

Ivy. I wish I'd never planted it. I bought it in a tiny pot from the nursery, planted it under a hedge and then forgot about it as I had a difficult pregnancy and small baby. When I remembered about it it had spread underneath the hedge and was climbing up the house wall. Now I can't get rid of it. Thug!

Oh - buddleia! Self seeds all over and can survive with the tiniest amount of soil. I had one growing out of a crack in the wall of my third floor window, and the roots spread inside the flat under the floors of three rooms. I thought it was dry rot for months 💀😱

euphorbia, lung wort, marjoram, geranium, hiacynth, mint, fennel

Blooming maple seedlings from next door's tree. They grow everywhere, and if I don't spot them I've got a 4-footer to deal with. And hardy geraniums. Not the pretty ones I started with but a muddy coloured thug. Anything I treasure usually gets taken out by the honey fungus after a year or two. And gardening is meant to be restful

Foxgloves in every area. Never shake the seeds off the dead branches, unless you adore them.

We have buddleia and Passion flower, can they really damage my house ?

@listerclocks to be fair while buddleia will grow absolutely anywhere (seemingly) there needs to be something for them to grow in. At my old flat there was a crack, the guttering leaked pretty much directly into the crack, and the roof was also leaking so it was the crappy building creating a nice little microclimate for an opportunistic seed. As long as your house is in good repair you should be fine.

I don't know about Passion flower - I am surprised by those stories. My parents had one growing up their house for years and it never invaded.

I must be a rubbish gardener as alchemilla mollis doesn't self seed for me. One thing that still pops up is lemon balm.

Bluebells . Lovely in woods, not in my Borders. Agree with the wisteria. It covered the front of our house when we bought it and removed all goodness from the front bed. So much maintenance required for so little return.

I must be a rubbish gardener as alchemilla mollis doesn't self seed for me. More likely to be your soil and conditions. On heavy clay I have no problem with buddleia.

I love my pulmonaria (lungwort). It's fantastic for bumble bees, and so pretty!

Campanula is my bug bear, it grows everywhere and is utterly ineradicable. And it swamps everything.

I had a lot of Lords and ladies, but a determined set to last spring seems to have had an impact, touch wood.

I'm happy to have pulmonaria spread through the garden too, the sound of bees in spring is amazing. It's easy to pull up too, gloves needed because of the nasty little hairs on the leaves. But reading through this thread, I've realised that I have ALL of the thugs! ( Except wisteria, and I was thinking of getting one, so now I won't)
Whoever has the evergreen honeysuckle, it's a right sod. I cut it down, dug it up, sprayed it, repeatedly. And now, three years later, it's creeping up the fence again! I see you, pest!

Creeping bastard buttercup.