Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Gardening

Find tips and tricks to make your garden or allotment flourish on our Gardening forum.

Original poster

Thugs..you know you’ve got them

186 replies

Quarks69 · 06/02/2021 10:41

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!

OP posts:
ChristopherTracy · 08/02/2021 19:05

Herb Robert, giant nicotianas, euphorbia, crocosmia

FuzzyPuffling · 08/02/2021 20:49

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. My garden must be the boggy equivalent of a desert. I plant things and they regularly vanish. Nothing multiplies.

( Sulks at all the lovely things you all have in abundance)

cobblers123 · 08/02/2021 21:02

Bamboo and bindweed are the two in my garden that almost bring me to tears as I just can't get rid of them.

Next door don't garden and it is coming through from their side so no matter what I do it just keeps coming back.

So disheartening when you love your garden and spend so much money trying to keep it looking good.

BewareTheBeardedDragon · 08/02/2021 21:15

@FuzzyPuffling can you plant water loving plants? Lots of Iris love wet feet I think, and I'm always annoyed at the number of nice plants I fancy which I can't have because I have a drought prone garden and they like to live beside streams etc (grass is always greener - and in this case wetter!)

FuzzyPuffling · 08/02/2021 21:42

I did have a big lump of yellow flag iris that I had to remove! And schizostylus ( now called something else) likes it here.

CurlyhairedAssassin · 08/02/2021 21:46

until we had to have the house underpinned we regularly had passionflower shoots creeping up a bookcase in the dining room.

Shock
MerryChristmasToYou · 08/02/2021 21:50

Passionflower, buddleia, strawberries, ivy.

Next door has something thuggish that I can't keep at bay, and I managed to get rid of Japanese Knotweed. i also got rid of NDN's JK too by sneaky visits to their garden.

BewareTheBeardedDragon · 08/02/2021 21:57

Kaffir lily! Lovely, lucky you Smile

SalaciousCrumble · 08/02/2021 21:59

Lungwort (I keep seeing it for sale at the local farm shop and have to stop myself shouting 'whyyyyyyy?'. Buddleia is also a pain - the roots grow so deep in just one season. Creeping bastard buttercup which I fight a running battle with each year. And ground elder which I am digging out by hand. Also lilac. Despite loving the two lilacs in the garden they put up suckers everywhere and I am constantly having to rip/chop them out.

Oh and rosebay willowherb which self seeds like a bitch in any corner it can find. The hawk moth caterpillars love it so I feel so guilty pulling it out but if I don't it will take over from everything!

MerryChristmasToYou · 08/02/2021 22:14

Lilacs are a bugger as they are so thirsty.

Original poster
Quarks69 · 08/02/2021 22:17

Reading all of these I realise my garden is absolutely full of thugs. WondeR if I walked away who would win and take over the garden. I picture sweet woodruff and ground elder battling it out on the ground, with bamboo and bramble intertwined above 🥺

OP posts:
MerryChristmasToYou · 08/02/2021 22:27

muscari and oxalis. thugs.

BigusBumus · 08/02/2021 22:32

Fucking Mallow. 😩 Roots like deep long parsnips that snap and grow again. It's everywhere. I could actually cry 😭

RomanMum · 08/02/2021 22:36

Green alkanet.

MrsBertBibby · 08/02/2021 23:11

I can't believe people have crocosmia trouble. I try and try to grow it, but it never flourishes.

OneMoreForExtra · 08/02/2021 23:31

*BigusBumus

Fucking Mallow*

Never heard of fucking mallow. Is it similar to common mallow?
Grin

OneMoreForExtra · 08/02/2021 23:35

Red hot poker.

Forget-me-nots. They're so pretty but they choke everything else in the bed (every bed)

And geranium - I read somewhere that they smell feral, and god, they do when I rip out huge swathes of them every year

Strawberries are going everywhere but I can't think of them as thugs.

And I've planted sweet woodruff - nervously checks in shady corner...

Mandalakia · 08/02/2021 23:45

Brambles Sad prickly bastards that live in a labyrinth underneath my garden and send little shoots up to torment me. I'll remove one, turn around and another has sprung up behind me. I've found several massive root balls, some as large as my head, and dug them up but it just slows them down ever so slightly. Thuggy bastards.

TheDogsMother · 08/02/2021 23:56

Verbena bonariensis, alcemila mollis, aquilegia and crocosmia are absolute thugs in our garden. .

BewareTheBeardedDragon · 09/02/2021 00:33

Nigella, very very pretty, but by god to the self seed absolutely everywhere and carpet the bloody ground. Easy enough to pull up but a bit of a pita nonetheless.
And honesty, again pretty but crazy self seeder.

I like a lot of my thugs. Just wish they'd play nicer.

cobblers123 · 09/02/2021 08:51

Reading some of the thugs other people have in their gardens, I have several in mine but they don't give me any trouble.

Verbena Bonariensis, forget-me-nots, crocosmia, hardy geraniums, none of them have gone mad, although the Verbena does self-seed very easily but I just hoik them out if there too many of the new plants.

There is one that I no longer put in the garden, that's Salvia Hot Lips. It's a lovely shrub, very pretty and bees absolutely go mad for it but it just grows massively in a season and ends up dwarfing everything alongside it. I only keep it in a pot now, that way it can't take over the border.

ChristopherTracy · 09/02/2021 09:23

Yes my Verbena bonariensis completely took over one bed so I have moved it now to somewhere darker and nastier. I have creeping buttercup too. I hate it.

Dusty Millar is another one that has completely killed anything underneath it.

I am not very good at cutting back.

BiddyPop · 09/02/2021 09:27

Not scutch but a different grass that wanders through the flowerbeds.

Dh has a plant with pink flowers that he likes but it wanders around underground and takes over the entire garden
And is very hard to control. I spend hours digging out plantlets every year. I need to start back on that this week.

We also have an ivy covered wall at the end of the garden, which has suddenly decided to spread along the ground last year so that also needs attention this spring.

MerryChristmasToYou · 09/02/2021 09:53

@MrsBertBibby, This is where you are going wrong - you are trying to grow it.

Plants that are cheap to buy are usually easy to grow and propagate or are thuggish.

Every year, i aim for a glut of courgettes and runner beans. Do I get a glut? No.

Thefirsttime · 09/02/2021 10:07

@cobblers123

Bamboo and bindweed are the two in my garden that almost bring me to tears as I just can't get rid of them.

Next door don't garden and it is coming through from their side so no matter what I do it just keeps coming back.

So disheartening when you love your garden and spend so much money trying to keep it looking good.

Weedkiller is the only way to get rid of bindweed unfortunately. I’ve managed to mostly get rid of it by digging as much out as I can and then painting weedkiller on the leaves of anything else which comes up. The roots go such a long way underground and break really easily so it’s impossible to dig it all out and if you leave even the tiniest piece of root in the soil it regrows from that.