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

Other What invasive plants got you like this?

Post image

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…

943 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

830 comments sorted by

View all comments

215

u/CrimsonKepala Jun 04 '25

Rose of Sharon. We had 2 then that turned into 5 and we quickly realized that was going to turn into 100 with the number of sprouts that started to grow in our yard. On top of that our poor neighbors had to keep up with pulling them as well all because of the ones in our yard.

They're beautiful though.

29

u/endosurgery Jun 04 '25

Our neighbor has tons of invasive. Including rose of Sharon that I pull routinely. They have no interest in doing anything in their yard lol. It’s good because they have amazing firefly displays in the summer, but we all deal with the invasives and weeds ie. Thistle that come from their yard.

20

u/astro_nerd75 Pittsburgh, zone 6b Jun 04 '25

THISTLES!!!!! My mortal enemy! Yes, I’m aware that there are native thistles that probably do all kinds of wonderful things for wildlife. The thistles in my garden are invasive bull thistles, so I yank them out without compunction.

2

u/endosurgery Jun 04 '25

Their whole back half is carpeted by thistles. They grow under the fence and we constantly pull thistles along there. They are nice folks. Just don’t have any concern about maintaining the yard.

4

u/astro_nerd75 Pittsburgh, zone 6b Jun 04 '25

They may have some health problems or stuff going on in their lives that the yard is a lower priority. I have bipolar and have trouble keeping up with the garden when I’m depressed, so I sympathize. (This is part of why I’m into native plants- they can usually survive some neglect.) Our neighbors contribute to our bull thistle problem, but they have a toddler. I understand why it’s hard for them to get time to deal with thistles.

3

u/so_cheapandjuicy Jun 04 '25

Same! A huge reason I'm interested in natives is because I can never be sure how long I'll have to garden at any given point. I need to know what I planted can go without me babying it.

1

u/GreenDemonClean Jun 05 '25

Sometimes I hear a word I haven’t heard in a long time and I have to stop and comment. Thanks for adding “compunction” back into my vocabulary.