I'm just curious, more than anything, as to what you consider high maitenance about trimming back an ivy bed (as compared to a mulch line you need to weed, or foundations plantings you need to prune, for instance.)

Not that I think everyone should go plop in ivy beds because they can have their downsides in a dozen areas, but for an older area with "period" plantings, ivy beds go with the territory and I find that keeping an healthy ivy bed looking neat is one of the easiest jobs around.

No, I can think of no chemicals means offhand any easier than just whacking it back.

Hit the new growth with Round-up. It will slow it down, but not kill the whole plant. It takes several doses of round-up with extra soap in it to kill ivy.

I'd be really reluctant to apply an herbicide to slow down the grown rate of an established planting, since its effect is not a known variable and can depend on several factors. If the client wants to maintain their ivy beds, at worse the landscape maintenance crew might end up obliged to replace it, at best it might end up looking like sin if the cuticle of the ivy has lost its integrity in some spots. Using it as a growth retardant is also not using it according to its label.

We have one rather large ivy bed on our property we need to maintain, and it gets attention twice or perhaps three times a year. I still consider that ultra low maitenance.

Funny, I kill ivy first go around...Maybe it's the different climate

I have maintained established ivy beds that required trimming at least every other week during the growing season. Sometimes weekly if it rained. I hand trimmed it- yuck.