Don't Let These Plants Hijack Your Yard
When we built our house 18 years ago, a landscaper suggested we plant a trumpet vine (Campsis radicans) to crawl up and around the giant arched window that is the focal point of our family room. The plant is lush and features an orange, trumpet-shaped bloom that flowers throughout the summer.
What the landscaper didn’t say, and perhaps unforgivably didn’t know, is that a trumpet vine is an invasive species that’s nearly impossible to tame. True, the blooms look beautiful dripping from leafy, woody vines that grab our house’s siding, but at least once a summer, the heavy vines dislodge from the house, drop to the ground taking the top layer of paint with it.
After a few years, we had enough of the determined plant and tried to pull it out. The vine laughed at our attempts to kill it and sent roots deep, far and wide. The more we pulled, the more plants appeared, one a good 50 feet from the house.
I have since surrendered to the vine -- it continues to wreck our paint job -- and curse the name of the landscaper who introduced it to our yard. I slam the plant’s reputation whenever I have a chance and warn readers to plant trumpet vines and other invasive species at their own risk.
Here are more plants that will hijack your yard.
Bamboo (Bambusa vulgaris)
Pros: Bamboo is a slender, fast-growing plant that creates a thick, green privacy screen.
Cons: Once you plant bamboo, you’re stuck with it forever as it grows taller and wider seemingly by the day. The only way to contain the thing is to plant it behind a deep concrete barrier.
Mint (Mentha)
Pros: Mint’s a tasty, medicinal herb that fights the common cold and gastrointestinal ailments.
Cons: Mint will spread throughout your garden, dig under fences and grow in cracks in stone walls. You can easily pull up the plant, because its roots are relatively shallow. But you’ll never get all of it, and it will continue to grow season after season.
Kudzu (Pueraria)
Pros: Kudzu grows up to 1 foot a day and can quickly fill in bare spots to control soil erosion. It is also used as a hangover cure.
Cons: If it doesn’t move, kudzu will quickly cover it, happily engulfing fences, cottages, telephone poles -- virtually anything in its way. Eradication requires herbicide treatments over several years; or, you can employ a herd of goats to nibble the kudzu away.
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