How to deal with creeping buttercup.

[OakleyStreetisnotinChelsea]

Suggestions gratefully received for my garden please.

I have a long, full south facing garden. It runs down to a river and woodland. There is a huge fir tree to the west about half way down on my neighbour's land so my garden is shaded once the sun moves round. I would love to accidentally kill that tree but that's another thread!

It was long neglected, typical buying after death of elderly person overgrown jungle.

Gradually we are working on it and it is really coming together now.

We have a big wildflower meadow, patio and flowerbed at the top then it goes to fruit trees and then down to the river.

It is this fruit tree and down to river area that I need advice on.

We have no lawn in the traditional sense, I'm working on encouraging and planting things we do want to spread and naturalise and digging up what we don't. So around the trees there is more grass and I've been working on under planting with bulbs and then it moves to more of a woodland floor with wild garlic, bluebells etc.

There was a lot of ground elder and over the past 2/3 years I've got on top of that. I'll never be fully rid because it is in the gardens of neighbours on both sides and one in particular is neglected. Unfortunately the side effect is that the creeping buttercup has moved in to all the empty spaces left from digging the ground elder.

Again I don't think I'll be completely rid, we live rurally so it'll come back. But at the moment there are areas where it is pretty much the only thing growing and I want more diversity.

Currently I'm just very gradually digging it out in small sections but this will take forever and it will just spread again the moment I turn my back. Plus come spring there will be big, bare patches where I've dug so either it or ground elder will move back in.

I'm doing it all on hands and knees with a hand fork to minimise uprooting other plants. There is lots of dead nettle, herb Robert and wood avens for example and some lovely big mossy patches.

Any other suggestions for dealing with it?

Any other fast spreading ground cover I could put in?

I'm hoping that if I thin it out enough and get other ground cover in then I can get a decent balance going on.

I don’t think it’ll help in your situation, but I find where I have long grass, the creeping buttercup is replaced by meadow buttercup, which more attractive and doesn't creep.

Thank you. It all gets long down there as I don't really cut back until autumn except for some paths and around the trees.

I am considering a seed mix by meadow mania which has meadow buttercup. Wondering if I just dig all the creeping buttercup I can and seed and then just hope the seed germinates and takes. I'm a bit late to try to seed this autumn sadly as still too much digging to do.

Interesting when you have both creeping and meadow buttercup, because the difference in flower colour becomes clear.

yes to digging up all the creeping buttercup.

Both have leaves made up of three parts. Creeping buttercup has the middle part on a stem, meadow buttercup has no stem to the middle part.

I thought the answer would probably be digging and digging and digging.

Have spent another couple of hours this morning. Hardly made a dent.