Petasites is less invasive than the Tetrapanax, and if you don't summer irrigate the garden, their spread is greatly limited by surrounding dry soil. It is only slowly clumping here in my northern California East Bay garden. I only plant Tetrapanax within a root barrier for bamboo. Bamboo can be invasive if it is a running type, which species is yours?

I guess I will opt out of the petasites, I like the large leaves and fast growth rate but in my older age I'm starting to listen to good advice rather than learning the hard way..... plus I've had enough run-ins with other spreaders to know how bad it can be.

But I still want to try tetrapanax! .....of course winter will weed that one out real quick around here.

I have that although I didn't plant it. One of those 'came with the house' gifts. :-)

I suppose the former owners thot it would look cool beside the pond however they are in full sun so once the weather warms up (which can take awhile here), they pretty much look like poop. Large leaves yes mostly in shades of brown. :-(

I hope to dig two, three, four up this year and plant them in a specific and contained bed, in the 'forest'area. They are a Japanese forest plant and don't really like a lot of sunlite.

Eradicating the rest of them will, I'm sure be fairly challenging. However, I will prevail - not them. :-)

I am looking for more large tropical looking plants to plant in my 35 X 25 foot Bamboo grove. The grove is completely surrounded by a bamboo barrier three feet deep in the ground. Sounds like this may be a good option with no concern of being invasive since it is in a controlled area...

How about petasites in pots? Can they spread to garden bed areas if they are planted in just pots on the patio?

I bought Petasites japonicus from a garden catalogue. In there it was rated to zone 4 so I thought maybe a sheltered spot in zone 3 it would survive. It was a small 4 inch pot that I planted and it looked impressive about the second or third year, but I removed it as I was building a patio in that spot and also, it was starting to spread too much. It seems too that it would spread very randomly. That is, you have a nice fairly solid patch of it about 4 feet by 4 feet in size and then suddenly, about 8 feet from the edge of that you would have the offshoots coming up. Then in another direction another shoot randomly sprouts. I'll just stick to edible rhubarb for my big leaf plants and hostas too, though not as huge.

Hello everyone, is there anyone willing to share a cutting of this plant