Your post resonated with me, kali_c, because I've fought English ivy for the past 15 years (& 10 of those years in another country!).... I hate that stuff! It covered half our house in England very picturesquely, until I realized what a dreadful menace it was and started the arduous, years-long process of tearing it off.

In this country, I was NOT happy to see it invading the property we wanted to buy in southeast MA, but at least I knew my enemy well, lol. I've destroyed a lot of it, thank goodness, but it's always lurking about, waiting to pop up where I least expect it.

We've cleared it from our lawn and most of our trees, but I'm afraid of how it's interwoven itself into the very structure of our stone wall, so I've only trimmed it there. Little animals live in the wall AND the tangles of ivy there, another reason I'm reluctant to actually eradicate all of it. In a way, I'm nervous the whole wall--which is high--will tumble down if I get too aggressive. :( So that territory is a truce of sorts.

Good luck with your batch of EI--I hope it's gone!

Barret001- I’m glad to hear you have yours mostly under control! It’s a shame about the ivy in the stone wall. Perhaps you can use an herbicide safe for animals?

I have a similar situation where it’s growing through my stone wall but the wall is pretty beat up already, and instead of being cemented together it’s just large rocks placed on one another so if they fall over I can just put them back lol.

I can’t wait to get the rest of this all out! I just need a company to come remove all the cut up bushes and fallen trees from that section of my property. I suppose I could do that myself but I have no way to dispose of it and don’t feel comfortable burning it

Hi Bill,

thanks for the info! Our ivy was planted by a previous owner of the house, I assume they did it to help control erosion on the side of the property since it’s sloped and has water traveling down it. But I’d much rather clear it all out, throw in a French drain and some ornamental grasses with big tap roots haha.

hmm I used the weed whacker to kind of dig into the dirt and sever the stems and kind of rip up the vines, I was told severing the stems would kill parts of the plant. I’m about to spray the lawn with herbicide so I’ll be sure to get the ivy too.

I agree with Bill that simply cutting the stems & roots will not stop the English ivy from resprouting from the pieces left. Some of the roots can go deep into the soil & are ready to send up new shoots at any time of year (it is evergreen), if my ivy mass is anything to go by. I chopped up a couple of thick tenacious roots, then sprayed the cut ends I couldn't pull all the way out of the soil.


Bill, my stone wall is not pointed; it's a towering heap of boulders that forms a steep wall on one side of my property. The English ivy has interwoven itself over the decades until it's almost a part of the wall. Chipmunks live in some holes between the stones (as I discovered when I tried to cut the ivy drastically) and I'm fine with them there. There may be snakes living there as well, and I think there are bumble bee holes?/dens?/nests in that wall--I see both in the garden abutting below the wall as I work in it.

I'm OK leaving the ivy on the wall itself...but only if there were some way to prevent its spread to the garden below or the forest up top. As there is no guarantee of that, I wish I could eradicate it all without compromising the wall's integrity and the wildlife cozily at home there. So the situation of the wall has come down to a kind of an uneasy truce for now.....

Oh no! Well good for me to know. I have concentrate weed and brush killer I’ll have to use. I’ll also be hiring someone this summer to remove a large pile of landscaping debris so perhaps I’ll add on them pulling up the ivy