Every wet year we get, some new invasive washes down the hill and tries to take over. This year, it's mallows. They're EVERYWHERE! And the #$$###$ stuff grows, well, "like a weed".

Are these different than the native desert globe mallow?

A freind of mine while president of the Nashville Garden Club had an idea for a one day event of eradicating invasivie exotics. It's turned into an ongoing multi state thing and growing! So there is good news out there...https://www.weedwrangle.org

If it's common mallow, yeah that stuff is all over my in garden too. I find it is one of those long tap-rooted weeds that can be pulled free from looser soil intact in a very satisfying way. But it spreads like mad and, like the dandelion, can survive being mowed and weedwhacked to the ground over and over, quick to flower again.

I love my winter honeysuckle, it's a beautiful shrub out of bloom. But I have a big enough yard, to have in a corner when it's done. I don't think it's invasive..

There are lots of threads here about invasive plants. I wish garden centers that sell plants would have a warning on some of them such as Chameleon Plant or houyttunia.

Some of the most invasive plants I have are trees. Sugar maples come up all over the place, and oaks and river birch. I have Sweet Autumn Clematis that comes up everywhere. This alstroemeria is invasive:

Others invasives I have:

privet

triple orange daylily

English Ivy

Vinca minor

common honeysuckle

wild grape vine

forsythia...spreads from the roots

Used to have but managed to mostly get rid of

physostegia

bee balm

mint

lemon balm

Then there are plants that get a lot bigger than I thought they would. Thinking Leyland Cypress. I thought they were shrubs but they're really trees that can get 70' tall. I had 8 big ones about 60' tall removed last year. The tree guy said he removes more Leyland Cypress than anything else. They are not that long lived either, so definitely can present a problem and cost you a lot of money. It's tempting to plant them because they look so nice and grow so fast. I do notice that on the tags on them in stores they have a height estimate. I don't remember seeing that.

Maybe a forum on Houzz could be a general " avoiding mistakes" forum. But if you read here much it is not unusual to come across cautionary mistakes offered by others.

Ecologically speaking, a plant in it's native habitat cannot be "invasive". Invasive is not the same as aggressive. Just because a plant in your garden doesn't "seem" invasive doesn't guarantee that it is not being spread by wind or birds into areas where it will interfere with the existing native ecosystem.

It's hard to control the ivy and vinca that the neighbors grow next to the fence. It slithers under the fence and roots on my side. Vinca!! The bain of my existence

Paul, the neighbors directly behind us have blackberries and I am constantly cutting canes that go over and under the fence. Grrrr!

Well if we're complaining about invasive weeds in our gardens then I nominate field bindweed as a contender for "Most Annoying". I also have some kind of knotweed that plagues my vegetable beds. And I spent a lot of time over last season pulling a most hated invasive weed here, tribulus terrestris, out of my front yard beds.

I have to agree with the comment made above that if a plant is native to an area, it is not invasive, no matter how eagerly it spreads. For that reason sugar maple is not invasive in eastern United States. Now Norway maple on the other hand is indeed invasive, very much so. Also invasive are the various callery pears (Bradford pears etc) widely planted as ornamentals and doing their best to take over the temperate world.

Haha, we have not only Himalayan Blackberry, lemon balm, English ivy, vinca, bindweed, mallow that are mentioned above, but also many other weeds like Bermuda grass, quack grass, old man's beard, Jupiter's beard, goosefoots... The worst is definitely bamboo! I hurt my wrist badly while I was shoveling it out two years ago and still feel pain now. Alas. At last we admit it will live longer than us unless we use a backhoe to remove our 1/4 steep slope.

@junco East Georgia zone 8a I'm so glad you pointed out the difference betweeen "native and agressive/thuggish" and "invasive." To make things even more complicated, a plant can be native to one part of the country and invasive in another--take ceder trees in the plains of Oklahoma, for instance. An an exotic species can be invasive in one part of the country (that matches its original habitat) and not in another.

I think the worst invasive is the one you have to deal with. On my property in NC I have: chinese privet, autumn olive, wisteria, english ivy, and stiltgrass. I hates them all, my precious. But I am very, very grateful not to have bamboo, kudzu, or japanese knotweed. So it could be worse!

I find one of the best resources for eliminating invasives is your local chapter of the Audubon Society. They'll list the worst ones in your area and the best ways to get rid of them.

Where I live in Maryland, every vacant lot becomes nothing but invasive plants in short order. The only think keeping an invasive plant in check is a more aggressive invasive plant. Looked nice seeing a thousand Bradford pears in bloom along the highway a few weeks back. At this point, it seems pointless not planting something because someone else thinks it's invasive. At least where I live. It doesn't bother me at all if someone plants, say, a Japanese barberry. I would happily take the vast majority of invasive plants over what's growing now. The only realistic way to fight mother nature would be to kill everything and plant oaks and maples.

"At this point, it seems pointless not planting something because someone else thinks it's invasive."

Why bother trying, right??! Geez.

I'm with Paul here. The point of invasives is that they crowd out native species--that's harm--and alter habitats in ways that harm native fauna as well.

I have green snowdrops down in the woods that are spreading with disquieting enthusiasm. I actually ordered native snowdrops and got sent the wrong thing. I no longer buy from that nursery. At least snowdrops have limited invasive abilities, or so I hope.

North American black locust grows all over the place here and is accepted as a permanent resident; Virginia creeper grows wild, looking very handsome: I don't know how much of a problem it could get to be. I've noted that the Oregon grape, Mahonia aquifolium, that I have in the garden has definite invasive tendencies, seeding in the woods--I form intentions in my busy life of digging it all out when I get time--and I've seen a plant of it feral in another part of the local area. I was interested to read that our locally native laurel spurge, Daphne laureola, is invasive in the Pacific Northwest, roughly in Oregon grape's native area. I haven't had much success getting it started in the woods where Oregon grape is such a success. Bay laurel, the plant that supplies the bay leaves of cooking, has its native range further south in Italy, but it grows easily here, and is quite invasive, a problem because of its rapid growth, large size, and the heavy year-round shade it casts that smothers everything else.

Just ask someone in the Sonoran Desert about Buffle Grass. It's a tragedy. There's more to it than this brief summary....

https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-buffelgrass#:~:text=Buffelgrass%20is%20a%20perennial%20grass,plants%20and%20altering%20fire%20regimes.

Could cultivation techniques, along with active eradication, help to contain invasive plants and thugs? Ivy is a native thug here, but we've managed largely to eliminate it from the woods where it overran certain areas. Currently I'm waging war against lemon balm, which is either native or long established, but definitely thuggish. I try to leave soil undisturbed as much as possible, and am a great fan of trees for keeping other plants in order. Of course this may not work when it's the trees themselves that are taking over. The last few years I've pulled thousands of maple seedlings down in the woods. They're native and present, but I don't want more of them than I have: our native maples are brittle, dominating, and I suspect less tolerant of climate change, drought specifically, than the oaks and flowering ashes that are my preferred principal woodland trees.

@User

Unless the invasive plants are eradicated and replaced with something that will prevent them from coming back, it is pointless. Not planting invasives in an area where invasives have already taken over accomplishes nothing. It's like people who have a lot of weeds in their yard. They kill the weeds and wonder why they still have a weed problem. It's because the only way to prevent weeds is to establish a thick turf. You have to create an environment where the weeds can't grow.

But, if it makes you feel like you're accomplishing something by not planting something that's already firmly established, Fine. But don't kid yourself in thinking it will make a difference.

This might not be a popular opinion, but I recommend reading Beyond the War on Invasive Species by Tao Orion. As I remember it, the argument is that some of our efforts to control these plants can be much worse than the growth of the plants themselves. Many of the plants we consider invasive have evolved to move into disturbed ground, so really it's the changes humans are making to the environment that allow them to grow and spread. Even the construct of native plants is somewhat artificial, because plants have always migrated into new ecosystems, it's just that human intervention has greatly sped up the process. The answer the book provides is to learn to live with the plants and allow nature to achieve balance on its own, especially considering that climate change is going to require all plants to move and adapt beyond their current habitats.

@charles kidder All I am saying is that if we did NOT make a concerted effort to suppress Himalayan Blackberry on our property, within a decade there would be no livable space on the farm and I'd be cutting a tunnel through the thickets just to get into the house. I don't think anyone would dare tell me its "pointless" to suppress an aggressive invasive with those traits.

Interesting point, Kid thorn, but that's clearly not what's going on with Buffle Grass in the Sonoran desert. It destroy an entire ecosystem i.f not removed.

I don't think it's pointless to make an effort to eradicate invasive species and restore native ones, but you can't expect to fix it all by yourself, or even in one growing season. And maybe some things will never be fixed, so some kind of triage is needed. It might be worth reaching out to your state and county department of natural conservation (or equivalent) office and see if they have any kind of program you can get involved with ... or offer to help set one up.

Some of the responses to this thread are relevant, but some are clearly written by people that misunderstand what "invasive" is all about. A plant outgrowing its space or self-seeding in your garden is not what makes it invasive! Plants native to the area are not an invasive species!

Tennessee Invasive Plant Council website

A lot of the plants mentioned on this thread are desirable native plants, valuable as pollinators. They are wild American plants evolved to compete in rough conditions, for example physostegia and bee balm.

I agree with Formerly RBEHS that the whole idea of what's a "native"plant can be a little problematic. How long does something have to have been here to be considered native? If we could go back in time 1000 years, I wonder what plants we'd find/not find. Anyway, I guess you can drive yourself crazy trying to figure that out; it's probably a matter of common sense more than anything (ie, probably not a good idea to plant bradford pears). And it is also true that some natives can be awfully thuggish. I adore my ironweed, with those beautiful purple flowers, but wow, if I didn't pull it out all the time, I'd have nothing else. And isn't poison ivy native to the northeastern US? Certainly not a good citizen. And i believe wild grape is, too, which will gladly suffocate just about anything if you let it. I guess it gets complicated. I do wish garden centers would try to educate people a little more, though, on what's invasive.