Hi,
I've only had the house for a few months, so I don't know what was there before. It would have been very overgrown if it hadn't been for the 5 (yes, 5!) layers of old carpet the previous owner had put down. It was a veg patch once before. I've pulled about 4 feet out and I can see it was still going. The wasn't any evidence of it trying to grow, but it'd didn't really seem dead. (Not sure what dead would look like though.)