How to get rid of English ivy without losing your mind
Clearing large patches of English ivy takes hours of grueling manual work and leaves you with questions about how to safely destroy dead vines and replant natives. If left unchecked, the invasive plant rapidly takes over trees and ground cover, requiring constant, exhausting maintenance to prevent it from covering everything.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Digging and pulling roots out manually with a shovel over an extended period.Did this help you?
- 2Using targeted high-adhesion herbicides like Roundup PowerMax3 with multiple applications.Did this help you?
- 3Cutting thick vines or climbing stems and applying herbicide directly to the fresh stumps.Did this help you?
- 4Hiring or using goats to clear the vegetation.Did this help you?
- 5babying the pachysandra to try to fill inDid this help you?
- 6Find a different ground coverDid this help you?
- 7Destroy all the ivy you seeDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“English ivy is a known tree strangler. If you're in the US it's also pretty invasive and pribably not a good idea to allow it to get established.”source ↗
“100% another nightmare. Find a different ground cover. Destroy all the ivy you see”source ↗
“It’s going to cover everything eventually. You’ll have to maintain it before it takes over the trees”source ↗
Where this came up
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