On Wed, 16 Feb 2011 19:32:47 +0000, Mike Lyle
wrote:

On Wed, 16 Feb 2011 16:00:34 +0000, stuart noble
wrote:

On 16/02/2011 15:44, Jake wrote:
On Wed, 16 Feb 2011 15:41:25 +0100, Timothy Murphy
wrote:

I planted an ivy the year before last against a house wall,
and it is not about 3 metres high.
It has a trellis up to about 2.5 metres,
but now it is growing above this.

My wife wants to cut it back because she thinks it will damage the house,
but I think that is a myth ...

Ivy won't damage a soundly built wall; indeed some say that it adds
protection and insulation to a wall, but give it an inch and it will
take a mile. Key things to watch for a

- gaps in pointing or cracks in brick/stone/rendering
- seals around windows and doors
- vents such as airbricks or those holes all along modern soffits
- pipework - if not soundly attached the weight of ivy can pull it off
the wall; ditto for a satellite dish plus ivy can affect the signal
- trimming it back well clear of gutters and off the roof

Miss something and its roots get in and can then make a tiny problem
much worse. And also worth remembering that whilst it will happily
cling to the trellis you've got, you need to keep an eye on the wall
behind the trellis.


I took a huge ivy off a Victorian brick wall. No damage to the
brickwork, but it had crept under the roof slates, and that certainly
was a problem.

I speak as an ivy-lover. Disaster waiting to happen, in my bitter
experience. As people have already said, it doesn't seem to damage
sound masonry, but it will get into woodwork and lever it apart: same
for slates and airbricks. I'd have it out and put in a trachelospermum
or something. Grow it up a mature tree (not a young one, if you want
my opinion), or an old stump, or some other support, but not on a wall
or a fence: I don't think it's worth the risk.

Thinking laterally - a neighbour had a clematis montana growing on the
front of his house (picture 2-storey house with protruding
porch/single storey garage attached on the side). He kept it pruned
beautifully. But what he didn't realise was what was happening in the
background. It had sent roots through soffit vents. The first he knew
was when the light in his downstairs loo (in the porch bit) wouldn't
work. Upshot was the soffits and fascias were removed, along with a
lot of his porch roof tiles, to hack out the maze of growth between
the ceilings and the roof. We're talking pitch black and something out
of Day of the Triffids! Those roots grew in the dark and filled a few
cubic metres of roof space, probably in about 3-4 years. Would ivy do
the same?