Spray the pachysandra with RoundUp which will kill it at the root level. Protect all of your potted plants with a garbage bag while you are spraying the RoundUp. As long as the foliage of the desired plants is not sprayed with the herbicide, they will be fine.

Even though the pacysandra is gone? Are all those fine roots from them?

There seems to be a misunderstanding here. You said that all of the roots had grown back. If it's not from the pachysandra that where are the roots coming from?

Pachysandra is a lovely plant, well deserving of kinder treatment.

It's called a "ground cover" for a reason... it's all those roots that you simply chopped up... all you really did by rototilling was grind up the environment and give the nodes fresh food for renewed growth.

Eliminating a groundcover requires more blood, sweat, and tears than a rototiller... or Roundup. Do a search on the "Groundcover" forum... they'll give you the skinny on how to eliminate it (but learn about its usefulness before you do, OK?).

It sounds like the pachysandra hasn't come back but that donnann is thinking that its roots, which were left in the soil, are somehow doing in her new plants. Is that what you're saying?

If so, I don't think this is the problem! How close to the house are these plants? How do you water them? What kind of soil did you use in the pots, is it from the bed or is it bagged? You might want to have a soil test, and you might need to ammend the soil with compost. If it was like cement before you started, it may be too poor to use without really being re-worked.

If I'm on the wrong page, just ignore this post.
DtD