Acanthus Mollis - thug or not ?

[StiffyByngsDogBartholomew]

I love acanthus. I'm currently planning a refurb of our very overgrown herbaceous border which is in a right mess. Please excuse hideousness and weeds, the garden has been relegated over the last couple of years due to various crises

so I'm planning to have 3 repeated planting sections with Queen of Sweden roses and mainly pink/white/purple perennials. I want to make two obelisks for Korean clematis to put between them.

I love acanthus however I've read on one website that they are very vigorous and need a lot of controlling. I can't be arsed with digging and dividing and the reason for perennials was that I want stuff that doesn't require too much effort.

is this a bit of doom mongering or if they are aggressively invasive could I control them by sinking into the border in pots to prevent root spread, like bamboo and mint ?

other planned plants will be Japanese anemones (they grow like weeds here) oriental poppies, hollyhocks, verbena bonariensis, verbascum if I can keep it alive, euphorbia, grasses, that sort of thing. A contemporary cottage border.

This is the sort of thing I want

Oh and peonies will also feature heavily cos they love it here too

Burncoose Nursery don’t like it much!

That's exactly the website I looked at @MereDintofPandiculation

They form a rootstock like a lump of oak, impossible to get out by hand 😄 I like the look of them though!

I would be inclined to believe anything Burncoose said. Except - I think they're in Cornwall. If you were in the NE, or somewhere where the Acanthus might not be so happy, you could risk it.

Hmm I think I might take a rain check on the acanthus then. We are in Hastings and while it's not Cornwall it's certainly mild

They get big and are the very devil to get rid of, but they don’t travel round the garden by themselves in my experience. They can be martyrs to powdery mildew. But I just cut them back to the roots when I get fed up with them at any time of year - they grow back fresh and smaller. They are excellent if you have a big garden to fill - looks so statuesque and dramatic and make a great foil for other plants if you have good deep borders and they can go at the back of something.

We have it in Kent in significant shade and it's been fine. I wouldn't plant it in sun though.

i've been trying to get rid of the acanthus in my garden for 10 years and it still keeps coming back. haven't done the glyphosate yet but it has survived everything else.

Ugly plant in my opinion. My opinion aside, it doesn't fit in the look of the border you've posted whatsoever.

I agree that they are impossible to get rid of if you don't want them any more.

I had loads in my previous garden (dry, sunny, barely any soil). They literally grew out of cracks in paving. Good thing I like them, as there is fuck all I could have done about them if I didn't.

Thanks all so much, you've really helped and now the acanthus plan has been scrapped.