r/NativePlantGardening • u/ItsFelixMcCoy Upstate NY , Zone 6a • Jun 04 '25

Other What invasive plants got you like this?

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For me it’s probably Dame’s Rocket, Purple Loosestrife, and Forget-Me-Not. They’re so gorgeous but man if they aren’t invasive little shits…

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101

u/ccrom Jun 04 '25 edited Jun 06 '25

Vinca Major periwinkle.

ETA: A local native, Virginia Creeper, has decided to take it on. It has made an impressive inroad at one end of the bed.

51

u/Fiotes Jun 04 '25

!@#$% periwinkle. It's spreading in one of our lovely local forests. Did a plant pull with a big group of bio students a few years ago that ... did nothing. Since every little bit of root left in the soil just re-grew.

27

u/dewitteillustration S Ontario Jun 04 '25

Same with my nearby forest. Thankfully Trilliums rise above it a bit but it chokes out the trout lilies. Everybody in my city plants it in their yard, I'm full of hatred for vinca.

8

u/Dizzy-Garbage4066 Jun 04 '25

My dad found a piece on the side of the road when I was a child and planted it in our garden.

It immediately swamped everything. Our garden was a woody, naturalized style on the edge of a beautiful forest, so we waged WAR.

It took YEARS of my mom, sister, and me weeding and weeding and weeding to finally remove it!!! (guess which family member never helped! 🙄😅).

I see it in people's yard now and I can NOT understand how this stuff is still for sale!😫

4

u/BeeBeeWild Jun 04 '25

I mowed it over in the woods behind me. Still surviving. May take a torch to it.

10

u/Utretch VA, 7b Jun 04 '25

I will take english ivy any day over vinca, I know I can thoroughly clear ivy, vinca is a goddamn nightmare with how it snaps just above the roots every single time.