I don't know the answer to this. There is probably no way the forest will be restored to how it was in pre-Columbian times, but some good things are happening. I think the American Chestnut Foundation will soon be able to give blight-resistant Chestnut seeds to anyone to plant. If this one tree could get reestablished, that would be huge.

Turbo, I know how you feel. In Pa. everywhere you look there are invasives including the crown vetch planted along the interstate by the state government. I am in the process of removing invasives from our property (some of which I'm guilty of planting decades ago) and replacing them with natives. Not sure what the answer is to the invasives the nurseries sell, but in my opinion it needs to stop or at least be noted on the plant tag. As for pulling garlic, a tip I use is to pull straight up on the stalk and you usually get the bulb that way.Very frustating subject!!

A trick I've started using with wild garlic is to take a shovel, make sure I get a healthy scoop of dirt all around the area where the bulblets are, then throw it in a black plastic garbage bag. Let it cook all summer, and it'll kill all the bulblets in the soil ball.

However, there is so much of it in VA, that I'm just fighting a losing battle. It's a truly horrible weed. Of course, I'll take it any day over the chickweed.....

Turbo, believe me I "feel your pain". Some New York forests are essentially 100% invasive trees, forbes, etc. The rest are a mixed bag. You can't make things perfect but you can make them better than if you did nothing. I spent my first 2 years of restoration gardening just cutting invasive (porcelain berry and bittersweet) vines out of the woods where I garden (I do this mostly on weekends, I have to do other work to make money). I am positive that this saved many trees from destruction. Down the street is a public park/forest where all of the trees are engulfed in invasive vines and will soon be dead. Part of what you are doing is keeping the natives alive as best you can so that they will be there to repopulate the land when we finally get our act together and start taking this problem seriously. Your land is like a lifeboat (leaky as it is) for the natives. To keep from getting too discouraged you can also cordon off a few smaller plots that you keep nearly pure and just do whatever you can with the rest. Take a look at some neighboring lots and you will probably discover that yours is doing better than most even if it is having trouble.

I also feel your pain, turbo! My 5 1/2 wooded acres are full or Japanese honeysuckle and Chinese privet, and Japanese climbing fern has a hold in some areas. Still, I've made progress just by keeping on keeping on. When you have so many invasives, you need to make priorities - my priority is any invasive that is choking a native tree or shrub, which is usually Japanese honeysuckle. I worked for a while this afternoon rescuing a particular yaupon holly whose berries are especially loved by the birds in the winter. The more trees, the better, because they create shade that slowly but surely kills off all types of weeds. I can say that I've got far less of the %#^*@ invasives now that I did when I bought this property, in spite of the extra sunlight weeds have gotten for the last few years since Hurricane Katrina felled so many trees. I'm just planting more!
Sherry

Same problem here. Every bit of forest near where I live is now dominated by shrub honeysuckle and smooth buckthorn, with garlic mustard, dame's rocket and motherwort growing underneath. The oak, maple, and basswood trees as well as many native shrubs are no longer reproducing due to the overpopulation of deer. Native woodland flowers are very hard to find, and each year I see less and less.
I think that the way things are going, all but the most aggressive native species are going to become extinct.
At least my property is like a little island where I can protect and encourage the native species, but it is a endless struggle to keep the invasives out.
Don't even get me started on the state of the tallgrass prairie in my area!

My woods are brimming with rosa multiflora and japanese honeysuckle. It is no exaggeration to say that there is literally a honeysuckle carpet out there. I also have an unhealthy dose of privet, I think, and some blackberry patches (although that gets choked out by the honeysuckle more often than not). It's almost--but not quite--humorous to see the invasives compete in areas I haven't gotten to clearing yet...in case you're wondering, multiflora is down 267-198 right now to honeysuckle in that ballgame. But I am determined to clear them out of at least my small portion of NC woodland.

A bright spot for the natives is spicebush and mayapple for me, I've recently found out. I don't know if it's Darwinian, but I have huge patches of these two plants competing toe-to-toe with the invasives. I also think I've identified some trillium popping up, and certainly more than few redbuds are asserting themselves (even seedlings). So all hope is not lost!...although the woods in a decade will certainly be changed from what they were. But I guess that's the way nature is, philosophically speaking. Isn't a fair amount of what we do in woodland gardening simply trying to control ( or even "correct") Mother Nature?

I'm jealous if you've got trilliums, mbuckmaster! :)
The pictures of them are gorgeous!
Sherry

It is frustrating... humanity typically destroys everything it touches. But somebody has to at least try to save the forests; from where will the native plants return after humanity either gets with it or vanishes from the Earth?

Good luck!

After reading about the evasiveness of plants in your hills I want to add color to my mountain which has full grown alder,pine,ma drone, and poison oak amongst dead leaves. Suggestions?

Instead of focusing on how many non-native plants you have and how much work it will be to get rid on them, instead maybe you can focus on adding or protecting the few native plants you have left. In practice, the two approaches can be pretty similar - both require you to cut and remove non-native plants - but the latter approach might be a bit less frustrating. If you have a few native plants, protect them by removing those invasive plants that are crowding or shading them. Perhaps add a few new native plants and protect them. As the native grow and spread, you'll gradually clear larger and larger patches around them, and hopefully the presence of established, stable native vegetation will inhibit the return on non-native plants to the areas you've cleared.

A big part of the problem is probably disturbance, which could include physical disturbance, excessive nutrients, or the invasive plants themselves. As you pull out one invasive plant, you disturb the soil allowing another (or more of the same) plant to sprout. Most of the native vegetation is adapted for growth in very stable conditions. As a woodland soil sits undisturbed with native plants growing in it, soil fungi grow and help prevent the spread of plants not adapted to the environment - most non-native invasive plants would fall into this category. So, if you can create small, stable patches of vegetation they might become fairly stable and resist new invasions by invasive plants. The stable patches might take a few years to become established, and they would have to be large enough (I am not sure how large, but 50 feet across seems like a minimum), but it might work, and creating a small refuge would be a lot more realistic than clearing the whole property at once.

Good Luck!

I'm in Pa. and what I wouldn't give for some of your plants :)

It's all relative, I suppose .. we have such a huge deer problem that I can look from one end of my 7-plus acres of woods and, without bending down, shoot an arrow to a bullseye at the other end -- deer have eaten all the understory from 5 feet on down.

I cannot keep the Pa. native flower, mountain laurel, alive on my property. Rhododenrons, though they aren't dying out elsewhere in the state, are hungrily gobbled up on my land. We have no shortage of may apples and trout lilies, but the deer browse them, as well as, believe it or not, the skunk cabbage in the wetlands on my property.

Native plants? I'd settle for anything green...

Yes, OK, I guess I'm exaggerating. But not much. Some things do OK, but not enough. I blame deer!!!

I think you have to tackle invasives in small steps, keep a long-term perspective, and look for small rewards.

My wife and I live on 4 acres in central CT. The wooded areas in our yard are covered in some of the worst exotic invasive plants- bittersweet, knotweed, GM, multiflora, japanese barberry, etc.

Last year we spent a few days clearing one badly neglected woodland edge of invasive plants. We replanted with native elderberry, and summersweet, both of which the deer ate. We spent a few days this sring pulling up a few new invasives that popped up. I just noticed today that the area is covered in native geranium, mayflower, and anemone and there are a few blue beech seedlings coming up. That was a nice surprise.

Three years we began our assault on the GM that had invaded our woods. We pulled countless bags full of the stuff. Last year there was less, and this year I've only pulled out a few handfuls so far and we have more trout lily than ever. I'm sure we'll be pulling this stuff forever since our neighbor's property is still covered, but it's become manageable.

Hang in there..

Josh

A suggestion for those where deer are a problem. Put a rabbit or chicken wire fence around the plants with the top pinched in. Think of pants with a drawstring This may allow for the roots to become established even if the deer eat the tops.