How do I make ivy spread?

[CustardLovingPooPooHead]

I have a medium sized garden with fences at the back and sides. The back fence is covered in ivy and I'd like to encourage the ivy to grow along one of the sides, too. It's quite a shady side which I understand is good for ivy.

Is this even possible?! Any tips gratefully received by this clueless gardener.

I would be more careful on brickwork, but by the time ivy is damaging a fence, the fence is probably knackered and the ivy will hold it up - works for me!

As others have said, I love it in the right place, and it can be as thuggish as it likes along my fences. The birds and insects love it.

Great for cutting too in the winter when there's not much about, berries look great and a load of winter evergreens with a few strategic flowers looks fabulous.

Gardener here - The stuff is cursed. You want it to grow it never grows. You dont want it to grow it fucking grows and grows! I dont know how it knows but it does!

You will be waiting decades. You can buy panels from Greentech. Green ripple is stunning.

Isn't Russian vine also known as Mile a minute? I don't have it but my understanding is that it's another one to be treated with extreme caution...

Thanks all - I never imagined this would be a thread of 2 pages!

I'm busy googling some of your suggestions for alternatives - thanks. A relative gave me a campsis cutting a couple of years ago, which I hoped would start to grow up the fence, but it didn't amount to anything which is why I'm feeling impatient.

One thing I have learned in my 5 mins of research is that Russian vine is in the same family as Japanese knotweed which is enough to put me off..!

@MereDintofPandiculation

Yes I know that, but going into that much depth (latin names and whatnot) wasn't necessary for the thread. I'm all for simplification but not misinformation. "Boston ivy ... it's another name for virginia creeper" just perpetuates a misconception.

Oh don't be so patronising.

@BewareTheBeardedDragon

Isn't Russian vine also known as Mile a minute? I don't have it but my understanding is that it's another one to be treated with extreme caution...

Yes. It is also closely related to Japanese knotweed.

Both are in the Polygonaceae family (for the pedants among us).

Agree with others. Just don't.

I have so much of it and will never be able to get rid, but I'd rather it were under control

Don't, really, really don't.

I don't think I am ever going to get rid of the ivy the previous owners allowed to rampage through the garden. It wrecked a lovely old greenhouse.

We rip it out every year and it always returns.

I spend half my summer cutting if off my fence, and I didn’t even plant it, it’s my neighbours.

I have mixed feelings about ivy. On the one hand, a six foot high, two feet thick and twenty foot long ivy is all that is keeping my 50 year old wooden fence upright at the bottom of my garden, and it provides excellent nesting sites for several birds.
On the other hand, the ivy on the brickwork of my house forced its way sneakily in between the cavity wall and the window frame, and produced a long leafy tendril inside my study before I realised what it was up to!
Treat it with caution, OP, and keep it well away from the house.

Please make sure you really, really want it. I planted some 17 years ago. Now it has taken over the area underneath a hedge, killed off all the other plants and is starting to get into the brickwork of the house. Every spring I try to cut it all back but it still spreads. I wish I'd never planted it now.

@PlanDeRaccordement

Ivy is horrible horrible horrible. You do not want it eating your fence. I’d tear it all out and plant other climbers like Passion flower, honey suckle, climbing wild rose, jasmine, something that doesn’t damage as much and actually has pretty flowers.

This. It is awful awful stuff. Turn your back for 5 minutes and it’s grown 30 foot while you weren’t looking. And it has a revolting “musty” smell.

I have taken great pleasure in removing every last bit of ivy from the garden (there was loads of it). Occasionally a new plant self seeds from next door/nearby and I panic (What if I’d missed it??) and immediately pull up any I see.

I spend my life trying to control/get like rid of the ivy in my garden!!

Bees love mature ivy that berries.

You just need to regularly clip it back to keep it under control. If your fences are sturdy it'll be fine.

crapbuttrue, my fence is anything but sturdy - it’s 50 years old and rickety as all get out, but the ivy has sort of....assimilated it - like the Borg in Star Trek. Resistance is futile...!
It grew through it, round it, over it and has now completely buried it, two feet thick. I’m not sure how much of it still exists in there. On the plus side, I don’t need to pay for a new fence!

I was you 15 years ago, carefully training ivy up my fence. Now I spend hours and hours every year cutting it back, perched on a wobbly ladder because it is so frigging high. The only thing I'd add to what other posters say is that if you have a small garden ivy makes it smaller - mine encroaches in by a foot or so and the feeling of space and light after I've had a hack is amazing.

TLDR Don't do it!!

@JayAlfredPrufrock

How do you stop it?

I'd like to know the answer to that too!

I spent much of last summer ripping ivy out of two beds that were completely overgrown, and the bloody stuff still comes back.

Ivy is the bane of my garden. On one hand it makes the fence it has co ered look lovely and helps keep it upright but it is now on the other side of my garden climbing all over my garage. I spend hours every year cutting it back! I curse the previous owners.