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!

It must be very special cardboard if it's keeping ground elder at bay !

Bluebells here as well. I don't mind them at the back of the garden, but every year I have a mission to dig the bastards out of my flower beds (usually with limited success). This year I have added Nigella, which is my own fault - I had no idea it spread as much as it does! Seed packets should have warnings for novices. I planted some fennel a couple of years ago which didn't thrive, but I've been digging out shoots ever since.

I'm taking notes on what not to buy from this thread though!

I planted Nigella 7 years ago, they only came back for 3 years and now there's none. I didn't pull them up or anything, I think they were crowded out by the geraniums.

I have a very large silver birch and nothing grows successful underneath it. The bed just looks like it's full of weeds. I think I need a thug to take over the area. Do you think sweet woodruff would grow successfully there?. It's very shady and has paving round it so hopefully it will only spread where I need it too. After 10 years of failing getting the area to look half decent I need to throw everything at it this year.

Has anyone mentioned ivy leaf geraniums? They took over half my tiny garden

Has anyone mentioned ivy leaf geraniums? They took over half my tiny garden Don't they die off in the winter? Ivy-leaf geraniums are Pelargonium and not winter-hardy.

@Manyoaks London Pride will grow right up to tree trunks and needs little in the way of soil. It certainly made a break across a path, and thrived after I ripped up the path encroachers then plonked them on bone dry soil under a tree in the middle of the spring heatwave last year.

Thank you I will look at London Pride too. This is the area I need to tidy up

Nandia: which is impossible to get rid of.
Wisteria: runners for bloody miles. It’s pretty put not 12 metres from the actual plant.

I have a ongoing war with oxalis. It’s winning.

I have a ton of cow parsley, it's coming up everywhere already and of course is so bloody tall. I've also got rid of a huge awful pendulous sedge years ago but I still have little ones coming up everywhere, horrible ugly plant IMO. I also tried to get rid of bears britches which I also think is ugly, still comes back a bit though.

On the other hand I have lung wort which I like because it grows in shade and is great for bees. I have bugle which has taken over a big area but I love as it's so pretty IMO. I have alpine strawberries in another big patch but like them too and I'd really like some mallow.

@Manyoaks sweet woodruff would be great there, as you said it is surrounded by concrete. It forms a dense mat and it’s every green with cute white flowers.

Sounds perfect. Thank you I will get an order in. Appreciate every ones help. On the thug front, I am losing a battle with ivy at the moment. Evil stuff

I have bamboo! People before us put some in a pot, it escaped and now it's a patch 3 metres by 5! This year it's coming out... wish me luck ..

Chelsea you could get a panda !

@SirVixofVixHall even then, the panda will need to be driving a digger truck.

Ivy.

I've got a pink rambling rose which has delusions of grandeur. The more I hack at it, the better it gets.
Virginia creeper that goes a long, long way.

And I planted a kiftsgate rose last year, it's got plenty of space but I'm watching it carefully.....

Oh my gosh loosestrife 'firecracker - just had to take up swathes of it, it has just spread underground. It's a newish garden so I am trying to keep control of it. Ominously the rhs website it says it has no benefit to wildlife. Also euphorbia, nasty stuff, but it's green, and it grows

Ominously the rhs website it says it has no benefit to wildlife. I find that surprising, Loosestrife is a UK flower so you would expect something to be using it, and "firecracker" differs in the colour of its leaves, rather than replacing nectaries and stamens by petals to create a double flower.

It's worth looking at the flower of Euphorbia. The female flower dangles out of the male, and forms a seedpod that looks like those balls-on-a-chain that are used as weapons in vaguely medieval themed computer games. Then a new set of flowers grows from the base of the old one, out of the same set of bracts (the relatively showy bits that look like petals).

@SirVixofVixHall

Chelsea you could get a panda !

Do you reckon that's why pandas are endangered? There is such an oversupply of bamboo that all they do all day is eat, and all thoughts of shagging goes out the window?

We have many of the thugs mentioned here, but in a large garden they can be an advantage.

Our wisteria covers the whole front fence so nothing else needs planting there.

Lemon balm can be found anywhere there is a patch of soil, as can Stachys byzantin a. My mint never really takes off and my crocosmia is very timid.

The brambles however are a serious problem. With fields and hedgerows either side we just can't get rid of it. Any gardening we do feels like going into battle.

Tree thugs... Oak and ash. It's easy enough to pick up the acorns all over my garden...but there are just so many of them. And next door's ash trees send seeds aplenty into my flowerbeds. I feel a bit guilt pulling them.up in case they are ash die back resistant, but they have to go.

Sycamores .Clue is in the last syllable.

Ash are evil. They deliberately take root under an existing shrub and you don’t see them till they pop out 4ft up and have roots halfway to Australia.

@MereDintofPandiculation 😂😂

There is an ash just over the fence. The bloody thing is growing through their fence and is now 20 ft high! They should have dealt with it years ago but the only thing in their garden is grass and ivy so they haven't. I secret,y hope it will get die back, it's nicking my light