Lovely house, but ivy growing the front wall

[MedicPeso]

Would this put you off?

It looks lovely, but the ivy reaches the roof, so I'm concerned about damage to guttering / roof / brickwork etc. We had some ivy removed from our (rented) house last year, and you can see marks all over the brickwork.

Is there something less damaging, but equally covering, that we could replace the ivy with?

ivy growing up the front wall

i personally like ivy, but i can see what you mean with damage etc. you could replace with climbing rose?

It wouldn't put me off, but I would remove it and not replace tbh. Our current house has had lots of damage caused by climbing plants so never again!

Oh, I don't know what to do .

It's a lovely house, but partly because of the ivy. It might just be a criss-crossed house if I had it taken down (well, I know it would be), which is why I wondered about replacing it with something else...

if you cut the stems (and dab them with glyphosate) it will die. This may take some months unless it is in hot sun. Once dead, it will pull off more easily, and the remaining traces will eventually decay.

if it is an old house with lime mortar, pulling it before the feet are dead may pul out some mortar. Climbing up and cutting with secateurs helps you remove the shoots and loose bits.

i said climbing rose, because it doesn't "insert" its roots into the wall. You would need to attach a frame or a trellis to tie them onto though. We planted a couple of climbing roses on the front of our (previous) house to replace very overgrown ivy. That was a south facing wall.

Clematis grows very fast and won't damage brickwork.

We've had a huge amount of climbing plants removed. They have left black marks, but I like them, it adds to the patina of the house which is stone built. They did hundreds of pounds worth of damage so definitely had to go!

Removing ivy when it is still alive leaves far fewer marks on the house IME. When it has died, the suckers become nearly impossible to remove. Pulling off live ivy will remove a proportion of the suckers, and the rest can be fairly easily scraped off. Time consuming though.

Thanks everyone. I think we'll not be put off by the ivy then, but will keep it under control before probably removing it at some point in the future.

It wouldn't - didn't - put me off, but when I moved into my current place I did get rid of the ivy. Even though the house is ugly, and the ivy was pretty.

The previous owner had tried to tear it all down in a temper after a row with the neighbour (semi-detached, elderly neighbour didn't like ivy tapping at her window at night). He caused a fair bit of damage. I made sure I cut the stems, put some nasty killing stuff on the stump, and carefully pulled stems down as and when they came away easily. It didn't cause any further damage.

So not a big deal, really.

My house is ivy clad- I like it!
Although every year I cut the suckers with a wall paper scraper so it is at least three feet from the guttering.

are you worried about the spiders?!

Wisteria climbs nicely but doesn't cling

Bloody hell wisteria has damaged our house so much! It was left unchecked by previous owners, but it has caused more damage than the ivy, including cracking a cast iron waste pipe in two.

Ok, you can't let it go behind pipes or under gutters, but otherwise it's lovely!

It's damaged our brickwork badly too..it was massively out of control but has put me off it for life.

Yes, I'm not that keen on spiders either!

my current house was covered in ivy when we moved in. It had caused problems with guttering and had even come into the bedroom, damaging the sash windows, ceiling and fascias

the ivy was easy to remove. But the fact it was so overgrown was indicative of the lack of basic maintenance on the house. And it caused damage in the back garden too.

In future, it wouldn't put me off. But I would expect it to go hand in hand with lack of other basic maintenance on a house. For example, someone who allows ivy to overgrow is unlikely to have cleared gutters.

We rented a house that had clematis growing on the walls. The roots got under the ground and did about £3000 worth of damage to the pipes