Gooseneck loosestrife! Ugh! It is a nightmare, as well as evening primrose. Ill have to get pics of those at my house. Lost so much space to them. I'm sort of organic, we have lots of pets and kids and even chickens. I'm apprehensive to use chemicals to pure the beds but I doubt I'll ever recover the space with out some kind of herbicide .
Dave

coneflowers! I like black eyed susans but I didn't know they would have babies clear across the yard! As far as bishop's weed I wouldn't mind if it would stay variegated but when it goes back to green it's just not pretty.

Mine would be purple basil (along with all of the listed above). Thousands of new purple basit plants every year and I try not to let them bloom and go to seed, but there's so many to try to keep up with. They are pretty, but to much plenty, no good!

Snow on the mountain came along with a gifted hosta from my friend. As soon as I saw it peeping through the ground, I sprayed it carefully with weed killer and it has never come back. I was amazed that it gave up that easily, because it was coming on with a vengeance.

Only invasive for me is grass. I have bishop weed everywhere and love the stuff. I do not have to weed my gardens all summer, love the color, do not have to buy mulch, so saves me money to buy more plants...I sound like a commercial for BW.

I think the bad name may have come from people that grow it in higher zones, soil and light conditions or people that like a more controlled look to their gardens I do not like to see ground, mulch or weeds other than BS in my garden.

I have not had trouble pulling it out where it gets too thick and it does not come back in that spot in the season I pulled it out. I had one garden that I needed more room for more plants I pulled it out and it never came back.

I love the look of Chameleon Plant for the life of me I cannot understand how people say this is invasive. I have had it for 5 years and I have a small patch.

I have never had BW revert and I have had it in the gardens for 15 years.

Ribbon grass (Phalaris arundinacea). Drought, shade, intense sunlight, subzero temperatures... nothing kills this. It's pretty until it gets out of control. Good luck finding every scrap of root.

Mints. They will send runners under an asphalt driveway, and pop up on the other side. It sent runners into the vinyl siding of my house, and grew out of a crack in the siding. This is best kept in a pot.

Silver maple. Not quite a companion plant, but probably a foundation planting for many of us. Thousands of baby maples sprout every spring: in my lawn, in beds, in cupped plant leaves, in gutters, in pots. How this tree did not take over the entire continental united states, I have no idea.

Dangerous near lawns: Creeping jenny and ajuga. These WILL grow into your lawn. Keep an eye on them. Also, they tend to climb all over and on top of small hostas, as they are both incredibly fast growing and evergreen here in zone 7. They're hardy enough that you can cut them short and they'll grow back quickly, so don't be afraid to hack away at these plants to keep them in check (but beware the scraps will grow into new plants wherever you throw them!)

It's funny one that is a weed for one isn't a weed for another. I keep losing all my mints and they don't spread easily even though I want them too but my bishops weed is horrible here(only at my house it seems too, all the other people with the Snow on the Mountain in the area seem to still have a nice edge). It came with the house, there was some of the variegated stuff left so I tried to save it and keptt trying to pull the plain green suff. All that did was kill all the variegated stuff and made the green stuff grow BIGGER! Now the green stuff is 2 FEET TALL! Since all my day lilies have filled in I don't notice it as much there but over by my shrubs I put two hostas and I can barely see them. My shrubs are even slowly being enveloped! If it stayed short like that green stuff with the white flowers I wouldn't dislike it so much.

That goutweed is a horrible plant. Took me many years to get rid of it in my garden. The lily of the valley isn't much better, seems to pop up everywhere. Lawn grass that creeps into the flower bed is bad, and be aware of the invasive nature of some of the bellflowers.

Donna, lawn grass is my most hated weed of all! There are products to get moss out of your lawn. Well, I want one to get the grass out of my moss! And my sedum, and my garden beds in general. Hate that stuff.

Agree that creeping Jenny is horrible once it gets in the lawn. I can manage it well in the garden bed, but it really takes hold in lawn.

Bishop's weed, creeping charlie, wild raspberries and wild cherries.

When I first started my woodland garden,there was a lot of Vinca Minor growing there. It must be a wild plant,because it is everywhere in my old garden. I doubt the previous owners planted it,because they never even ventured into the woods! Now,only very vigorous plants are there,because it will overwhelm them. I've moved a lot of them out of there,because of its invasive properties. The worst thing is,it doesn't go dormant in the winter! I do like the little blue flowers in the early spring,however. Phil

Goutweed and birds-eye speedwell

Camphor trees have persistent roots plus many many berries the size of wild cherry trees. Hate em, been pulling seedlings all year, and now a new crop of berries is growing.
Then there are the sweet gum balls, spiky balls the size of a bing cherry and they can blow all over the garden, don't just drop straight down. I have to watch where I step to keep from turning my ankle. The picker-upper is good for these, since I do not like the DH chopping into the seed and spreading it around the garden. Then of course, the squirrels are burying pecans in my flower pots and flower bed soil, easier to dig, and it is hard to pull up pecan seedlings with the nut still attached below ground.

I may come to regret starting the passifloras growing in the back forty. I did not see any seed pods last year, but this spring I have hundreds of baby passion vines growing all over the place.

Plus, there is a weed which I have no idea what tis, but it is beginning to come up now, and can set seed when it is a couple of inches high if you cut it down with the mower. I have a little sit-down wheeled garden cart that I will sit on to pull these things, clear one area and move a few inches further. One year I came home to a back yard full of wild onions, which had spread seed far and wide. I was pulling them up, careful not to drop the small seed onions at the top of the bloom stalk, and I filled a heaping wheelbarrow of onions for the trash that week. My neighbor said, "Oh honey they are good to eat!" Yeah. Like how many armies do you think I cook for!!!

Maple seeds. AAAAACCCKKK.
Rose of sharon seeds. An even bigger AAAAACCKKK. I removed all the rose of sharon from my yard when I moved in. (The original 5 shrubs and the 300 volunteers) Unfortunately, I don't think my neighbor would appreciate my cutting down their maple trees.

Creeping Jenny is wonderful.... in a pot, a TALL pot.

Begonia Grandis. I'm getting an uneasy feeling about this one, and may regret ever planting the first tiny little baby plant. It self sows and i think every single seed survives and thrives. It's a very pretty plant, and I think if I had to do it over, I would just remove the (interesting looking) seed pods. In any event, I have hundreds of them now, probably. Stay tuned...

Christine

I haven't read 1/4 way through the responses but have to respond. About half of my Bishops Weed has reverted to solid green Paul. They must really love my dirt.

I didn't add creeping charley because no one plants creeping charley - Do They? One never knows!

Les

I think Bishops Weed responds in the same way as variegated vs. green hostas. Like Alycia the solid green grow half again as tall as the variegated: more chorophyll ken?

In the picture I opened this string with, that dirt with the small Bishops Weed showing was sifted through a 1/8 inch hardware cloth last fall to remove the Bishops Weed roots. Which reminds me, the Lily of the Valley pips were removed too. The little lance shaped plants are seedlings from tiger lilys, not LotV. Maybe the Bishops Weed are seedling also.

My Maple Garden (hostas) was covered with the stuff, and I have used a shuffle-hoe on it for years and have it managed -but not gone. I want it G-O-N-E! Apparently it does not tolerate juglone. I have thought of using the leaf stems from my black walnut as a mulch to see if it kills it. There is no Bishops Weed in my garden under my walnut tree.

I think the previous owner must have cats also, because there is catnip growing everywhere I haven't pulled it out. My daughter Leslie has a cat name Shakespeare, and he love it.

While maple tree seedlings pop up everywhere, one pull or one sweep of my hoe and they are done with.

Les

Vinca. Lamium. Lamiastrum. Creeping jenny - lysimachia mummularia aurea. And then, there is that goldarned one that makes all the rest of the weeds look like wannabes. Crown vetch. I'd like to strangle the woman who planted it here.
I've eradicated mint, goutweed and gooseneck loosestrife by hand and hoe- no herbicides. It can be done; it just takes repeated application.
Right now, the worst weed here is garlic mustard. A nightmare.

Virginia waterleaf. Supposedly a protected wildflower in some states but in my garden it is the worst of them all, making thick mats of rhizomes that you need a mattock to chop out. Reseeds everywhere and the root mass gets so thick it chokes out all its' neighbors, and it spreads incredibly fast. Worse than white violets, which at least.are charming and not coarse like VW.

Autumn clematis is the other one. I pull it out of everything. If it wasn't so pretty in the fall I would take Roundup to the whole clan.
I have most of the others you all mention, you can hardly have a garden at the edge of the woods for fifty years and acquire about everything, but those two are the ones I can't get under control. I even have Japanese honeysuckle and euonymous tamed.

Sandy

Root peices from an old Trumpet Vine that I cut down and thought I had dug out all the root. I missed one small peice which came back several times a year for several years before I finally used concentrated Round Up on it.

Also next door they have English Ivy which is controllable but a pain to control because it is not mine and I am always having to pull it out as it crosses the property line.

ED

Ninamarie... I Love creeping Jenny "aurea". I use it around my stepping stones. It's fairly easy for me to control... I just keep it at least 3' from my grass.

My most hated is GRASS. I tried going edgeless for the last 3 years and now I REALLY regret it!

I have a weed called 'motherwort' that I'm guessing someone planted at some time. I'm still dealing with it!

Orange ditch lilies. Not even Round Up kills these.

Ostrich Ferns. They put runners out everywhere. But at least they are easy to get rid of.

And I agree with Christine about the Rose of Sharon seeds. I love my 3 shrubs but the volunteer seedlings are out of control.

Wendy

Vinca, Rose of Sharon, my neighbors black-eyed Susans, and violets. When they first appeared, I thought the violets were pretty and let them go in a spot where we had moss and bare dirt. Loved the moss. Thought the violets were pretty. The violets took over and now they are everywhere, not just in that one spot. Impossible! Oh and the moss died. :(

Sandy - You made me laugh out loud. When I moved to IL I brought two of my most treasured gardening tools with me, and people just scratch their heads and laugh at me. They were my rockbar and mattock. One of my SOL was putting hardscaspe in as a border edge, digging a straight line with a straight-shooter shovel. I asked why he wasn't using a mattock "Huh?" was his answer. I could have "mattocked" a straight ditch in 15 minutes that he dug 1-1/2 hours digging.

In the Ozarks Russian Olives, Honeysuckle, and euonymous were my bane. I now live very near the edge of an Illinois State wildlife Area, and the Midewin National Wildgrass Prarie, and Honesuckle is still an invader.

I also have had my time with Crownvetch ninamarie and glad I am now 500 miles from my past experience. I used to call it "crown wretch". Darned stuffs roots race across a lawn like a greyhound and in a week grow 8" upward. Mow today - a mess tommorrow. Keep it miles away from any garden, im0!

Rose of Sharon has no place being near a flower or hosta bed either. But it can be gorgeous as a small landscape TREE. I have seen them in both Hot Springs AR and Manitowoc WI pruned UP into small trees and when in bloom were really pretty. I did that with a couple of mine near a lawn, and the root suckers and seedling could simply be mowed with the grass. They fall into the same category as Lombardi Poplars, in my opinion,but with a gorgeous bloom.

Les

Check on the periwinkle, bishops weed both versions, catnip,violets,creeping jenny, ribbon grass. It hurts my back just thinking about all the work getting rid of all the previous owners choices. I still can't get rid of the green version it just laughs at me when I attempt to kill it. Plus forget me not, Yuka these things never die and are hard to dig up yellow single iris, oh yeah and these two not weeds but just as hard to keep out of my gardens.
{{gwi:1019724}}

Frogged(LOL) have you tried putting newspapers on your lawn?

One more bad-bad intruder; not a misplanted garden perrenial! The vine I just call Arrowhead. Is that the name of it? I'm sure you all know which I mean. It's a real thin runner that twines very tightly around any plant it chooses.If it grabs onto a hosta I have to cut it with florists shears in short lengths to get it off without tearing up the hosta.

I usually catch it early but this year I couldn't do it so its getting a strangle-hold. Fortunately, there aren't many but one root supports multiple vines.

This isn't a daytime intruder But on a dark night?

Les

SEEDLINGS!! are my night mare this year. I have many of the invasives already mentioned, but they don't seem to bother my hosta terribly, and since I like them for their benefits to my garden:shape, color, texture,flowers; I am willing to thin them as needed. The seedlings elm,oak are what are driving me crazy this year. Never have they been so prolific. I can't decide if the lack of squirrels or our mild winter is to blame. That said the first thing that came to my mind actually were a few hosta. I have some spreaders and they are driving me insane. Praying Hands, or a lesser look alike,is the one that is most prolific. I guess I need to invest in some cheap pots I can permanently sink into the ground. I want the shape and color in parts of my garden but I do not need it taking over!!

A wellcome companion plants knows how to behave well, that is stays put. Anything which requires me to hand weed several times the season, any plants dispersing seeds and then seedlings freely or have a lot of runners, I hate that, will prevent me from attending to more worthy enjoyment.

"Vinca. Lamium. Lamiastrum, Creeping Jenny", violets, Forget-me-nots, pachysandra, Bishop's Weed, ajuga, Dutchman's Britches, maple seedlings, too many columbines. Someone here mentioned last year that herb (name forgotten) which European immigrants brought over, I fight that too at the fence.

Early spring (here beginning of April) I distributed the contents of one big container of Preen, but seedlings grew anyway, so I had to weed again. Any companion plant which does not contain itself in my yard becomes a weed soon. When I apply Roundup and weedkiller then, there was collateral damage to nice well-behaved plants like Trillium.
Bernd

I mentioned my being nearbye two large government nature areas. When I moved in I had to contend with a couple of volunteers from the tallgrass prarie and wildlife management area: Joe Pye Weed and Elderberry. Joe Pye was a pullout but the Elderberry I have fought for 8 years now. Every little piece of root send up a sucker plant, which means another to fight. Fortunately it doesn't do well in shade and is totally destroyed by juglone.

Les

Les, I know what you mean about the "Arrowhead" vine. I have no idea what it is, but if you don't catch it when it's little, it strangles nearby plants. Hate those with a passion!

I have to add Woodland Phlox to my previous list. It seeds everywhere, especially IN my other plants, and you can't pull it out, it roots right in my other perennials.

Dame's Rocket is another one that I mistakenly planted. I got rid of it years ago, but still find it's seedlings coming up in my shrubs every year.

Wendy

I have a hot dry strip on the south side of our house where bishops weed (hasn't reverted to green in 30 years), purple violets, lily-of-the-valley, and lamium just have at it and duke it out with each other. Needless to say, other plants need not apply. I avoid walking around that side of the house, and the inhabitants remain healthy, but for the most part in their own space. If I ever decide to 'redevelop', I'll have to corner the market on Round-up.
Hostas wouldn't like it there anyway.
Jan

Bindweed! I think that nasty stuff is called bindweed! Well named.
Jan

Here's a pic of my Hosta @ the front porch with Lily of the Valley in front of it. The LotV is a vigorously spreading plant but is easily maintained within the area I want it to be due to it's shallow root system.

saxifraga stolonifera, lily of the valley and Ajuga Catlins Giant.

lily of the valley should be outlawed. I ripped out a whole section at my Daughters house last year because inlaws had planted it in full sun and was so ugly and burnt after bloom. I dug down at least a foot and a half took out mats of it. Still coming back this spring here and there-like a fungus.

plantgnome,

I certainly can AGREE with your feelings regarding Ajuga. I've lived in the same home 20 years and still find remnants of the previous owner's plantings of it. UGH

hostaLes, I'm lurking and learning on this forum. I've moved to a new house which only had grass in the yard. So I have lots of sod to remove to make planting beds. I've already created my hosta bed but now I'm working on creating beds for the sun-loving plants. Removing the sod was a lot of work using my garden spade. Based on your comments regarding the mattock, I bought one and it's amazing. It's so much easier pulling up the sod and it pulls the rocks out lickety-split! Thanks again for making my life easier!
Sheila

I don't have problems with most of what has been mentioned, primarily because I haven't planted any of them besides ajuga. The ajuga patch I have is in the parkway in front of my house, it is an area about 3 x 4 between my driveway and my neighbors and there is a street light and a verizon box, and there used to be a weedy patch of grass. I love how the ajuga has taken over there and I no longer have to weed or mow.

However, the WORST (and I can't believe no one has mentioned it) is SPIDERWORT! OMG it is insidious! I mistakenly planted a coupe of clumps of different colors about 10 years ago and it is everywhere! It is growing in cracks in my driveway, between the bricks in my walkways, popping out of the front of my EP Henry retaining wall, in the lawn, in every bed, in my neighbors yards, EVERYWHERE. It laughs at Roundup and pulling it seems to do nothing. It has to be dug to get every shred and it still seems to come back. It is the cockroach of the plant world.....

Alexa

Gooseneck loosestrife never ever plant this it grows and spreads every place. I can not get rid of it

Lily of the Valley, I've been fighting it for ten years and the runners are more than a foot deep in my beds. It does choke out and smother more desirable plants.

Spanish Bluebells (squill) they seed everywhere and also choke out other plants. Ditto Muscari grape hyacinths. Been digging these out for ten years too with no success. Their floppy slimy leaves are the big problem and they come up in the crowns of other plants stealing their water.

Lamium, I thought it was well behaved with hostas but it is smothering everything in the mixed shade bed I planted it in. Not staying low between plants, creeping up and over everything.

Sweet Woodruff too.

So far, I love Ajuga. No problems with it other that it rots out and dies.

Both my friend and my brother have Bishop's weed. I'd never, ever plant it.

My house came with yellow loosestrife and snow on the mountain. Both took years to eradicate! The yellow loosestrife still pops up 9 years later in strange places. I love my Joe Pye Weed for bringing in the butterflies, but I find it everywhere in all of the my gardens if I don't cut the blooms off before they turn to seed. Vinca is one I wish I would have never planted!
Jen

I have no problems with Ajuga either. I have it in a very dry shade area, and it makes a nice carpet under my hostas.

Mint. But kept in pots, great in cooking.

hh