Tips for home and garden:
More about English Ivy

English ivy “deserts” have sprung up all over the Pacific Northwest, and British Columbia is no exception.  Once it escapes garden confines, this invasive import smothers valuable native habitat groundcovers, shrubs and even trees.

Ivy smothers a wide variety of plants ...    ... and strangles trees

If you already have English ivy in your garden, keep it firmly in check on the ground, and don't allow it to climb trees.  Once it climbs, ivy produces flowers, berries and seeds that are easily spread to natural areas by birds.

Ivy can eventually kill even large mature trees, first by outcompeting them for light, and then by making the weakened tree so top-heavy (especially when the ivy infestation is drenched with rain) that a strong wind can blow it down.

If ivy has climbed any trees in your garden or in nearby natural areas, here's what to do:  Cut all the ivy stems on the tree trunk at chest height, strip the stems down the trunk to the ground, and cut again at ground level, as far away from the tree as possible.  Leave the remaining ivy up in the tree to die back over a few months before attempting to strip it off, so as not to damage the bark to which living ivy clings strongly.

Ivy has just been cut from the lower trunks of these trees.    Remaining ivy on upper trunks dies back In a few months, and can then be readily pulled off (or will eventually fall off by itself).

Better yet, invite all your friends over to help you remove the ivy entirely from your garden!  Hard work, but you may well be saving yourself (and others) a lifetime of shearing, snipping, hacking, yanking, dragging, bagging and bundling!

Cut & roll, cut & roll – a strenuous but effective method for removing long-established ivy infestations.    Young volunteers haul their streamside ivy “catch” to a green waste pickup pile

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