{"id":3234,"date":"2019-01-03T01:01:15","date_gmt":"2019-01-03T01:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ongardening.com\/?p=3234"},"modified":"2019-03-06T23:18:32","modified_gmt":"2019-03-06T23:18:32","slug":"a-cautionary-tale-about-ivy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ongardening.com\/?p=3234","title":{"rendered":"A Cautionary Tale About Ivy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

 Ivy brings a combination of pleasure and pain to the garden, and the potential to surprise gardeners who do not pay attention <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forty years\nago, when I moved to my current residence, the property had a generous crop of English\nIvy (Hedera helix). This most common species of the genus Hedera has some appeal\nin the garden. The Royal Horticultural Society has honored fourteen cultivars\nof H. helix with its Award of Garden Merit, reflecting the plant\u2019s apparent\ngood behavior in England\u2019s climate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite its\nBritish credentials, H. helix grows rampantly on the west coast of the United\nStates. Washington and Oregon have listed it as a noxious weed. California\u2019s\nDepartment of Food and Agriculture has not yet listed this plant as a noxious\nweed, but hopefully is considering that action. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This plant\nhad covered much of my new garden, grown into some shrubs, and overwhelmed a\nlarge evergreen tree. We removed the tree, with great regret. After several\nmonths of hacking at this invasive plant and uncounted ivy hauls to the local\nlandfill, we had it under control. During the following years, we pulled many\nsprouts and still do today. The more recent sprouts probably began with bird\nvisits, but it is not impossible that dormant ivy seeds have been lurking in my\ngarden for decades, awaiting a taste of moisture and sunlight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

More\nrecently, perhaps five years ago, a variegated cultivar of Algerian Ivy (H. algeriensis)\ncaught my eye, and I planted a small amount near the base of a chimney as a\ngroundcover. All ivies grow horizontally, and are often selected for\ngroundcover duty. My willingness to give this plant another chance in my garden\nreflects both short memory and persistent optimism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the same\narea, and with similar optimism, I installed a Big Mexican Scarlet Sage (Salvia\ngesneriiflora). This plant quickly grew well above ten feet in height (it can\nreach twenty feet high in the mountains of northeastern Mexico) and spread to\nfour separate shrubs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These\nbeautiful but huge plants concealed the ivy\u2019s relentless spread. The Algerian\nIvy\/Big Mexican Scarlet Sage collusion continued for weeks, until the enormous\nsalvia finished blooming, and became ready for renewal pruning (i.e., cutting\nit to the ground). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That drastic\naction revealed that the ivy had discovered the chimney that rises about thirty\nfeet beside the house, and used it aerial roots to grow to the top of the\nchimney and spread in both directions across the side of the house. This growth\nhad not been impossible to observe, but the tall shrubs close to the pathway\neffectively screened the situation from view. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a\ncertain charm to ivy-covered walls, but the plant eventually can cause damage\nand rot, and harbor unwelcome wildlife. My best choice was to have the ivy\npulled down, expecting that it would take down some of the thin-brick veneer,\nwhich it did. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
There is no simple solution to ivy on the house and chimney. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The next\nsteps of this project include reattaching the missing pieces of the veneer,\nremoving the ivy and all but one specimen of the Big Mexican Scarlet Sage, and keeping\nit pruned to appropriate size. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, the project includes shopping for plants to re-landscape the area. The UCSC Arboretum\u2019s Fall Plant Sale will be a fine opportunity to acquire California native plants for this project. The sale begins at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow (Saturday, October 13th<\/sup>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lesson learned: if you plant any variety of ivy in your garden, check occasionally to make sure that it is growing only where you want it to grow. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

 Ivy brings a combination of pleasure and pain to the garden, and the potential to surprise gardeners who do not pay attention Forty years ago, when I moved to my current residence, the property had a generous crop of English … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[186],"tags":[22,21,31],"class_list":["post-3234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays-2018","tag-landscaping","tag-pruning","tag-weeds"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2WCVL-Qa","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ongardening.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ongardening.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ongardening.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ongardening.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ongardening.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3234"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/ongardening.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3395,"href":"http:\/\/ongardening.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3234\/revisions\/3395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ongardening.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ongardening.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ongardening.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}