Waging War on English Ivy
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After spending a month evaluating our yard, I finally dug in on Sunday. The general rule of thumb when buying a new home is to wait a year before making any major changes to gardens. There are many reasons to wait. You don’t know what’s underground waiting for its season to impress- bulbs, spring perennials, late summer perennials, etc. Or you may decide to pull a shrub that is seemingly dull during the summer months, not knowing that it truly shines in the dead of winter with its bright berries or foliage. It’s best to just take notes around your yard and then make big decisions the following year. Of course, there are also plenty of reasons to get to work right away. Our yard has very mature landscaping and much of it is overgrown. I am focusing on general cleanup this summer and will make transplanting decisions next spring. My biggest battle facing me is English ivy. Ivy can look so pretty and adds a sort of cottage feel. However, it is actually considered a noxious weed in the Northwest! It’s insanely aggressive and can harm trees, buildings, and native plants. Lucky me- we have A TON OF IT!
You might remember a post I wrote a while back about clearing out the clutter. I compared cleaning out a garden bed to cleaning out a closet. Sometimes when garden beds are so full, it’s hard to know what’s even in there. It can be intimidating to dive in and start clearing out. When you move to a new home, it is even more intimidating. The ivy didn’t look bad necessarily. I stared at it many times trying to decide if I wanted to start pulling. Then I thought at some point I need to take ownership of this yard. My newly adopted shrubs and trees need to be liberated! So I dove in and started yanking that ivy out!
As you can see, this front garden bed was completely taken over by ivy. There is a beautiful Japanese maple, a heavenly bamboo, and a couple of euonymus shrubs that were completely choked up.
Another shot of the chaos. The viburnum on the right is completely overgrown as well. It has blackberry bushes growing up inside it. I pruned out a lot of the low lying branches and cut down the blackberry vines. I will need to make a more permanent move against those guys in the future. Once I got in there with my pruners, it became easy to decide which limbs needed to go. There was a lot of dead wood under the canopy of the maple tree, as well as the viburnum.
After a few hours of pruning and pulling, quite a lot of space was created. My main goal was to pull the ivy away from the shrubs so I could get a better look at the space. It’s still a mess and will require several more hours. I wasn’t entirely sure about pulling the ivy that borders the grass at that point but after reading this article by Ann Lovejoy that my friend sent to me, I’ve decided that it all needs to go. It’s just too invasive. Ivy has taken over many other areas of our yard so it will be a long war with many battles. Once I get this bed cleaned up, I will figure out what to plant.
Do any of you have suggestions of a good border to replace the ivy?
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Looks good, jenny. I do love the look of ivy but it is agressive! How about hypericum? I love it’s pretty and friendly yellow flowers. Creeping jenny would be appropriate! I have a little ground cover i call the lion plant…has a tiny flower with blue “eyes”. No idea what it’s really called. How about a tiny thyme? So many choices…i love groundcovers!!
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Wow, that looks like a lot of work! I’m sure that lovely ivy has a nice deep root system as well. Like you mentioned, a great way to get your work out in! And I love your advice of waiting a year to see what happens in your yard. Six years later, I’m still surprised at the gorgeous-ness that happens in our year every year. When we looked at the house in December we had no idea how many cool plants we had.
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