"Slopegardener" wrote in message
...


kay;927230 Wrote:
Like you, I'd be inclined to leave, but I've never tried removing it so
I've no idea how difficult it is to keep in bounds. I can remember
seeing a stately home garden with bank with cascading stream , and a
large proportion of the bank covered with its bigger and more aggressive
cousin Petastites japonicus - interesting article about t hat species
he
'John Grimshaw's Garden Diary: Petasites japonicus'
(http://tinyurl.com/68carla)

I shied away from weedkilling it as the leaves are in, under, and over
so much else until they dominate and I don't want a scorched earth
policy. As the conspicuous leaves are easy to pop off I'll just do that
either until maybe it discourages spread are simply in perpetuity. You
can clear square meters in minutes. Frost might knock the colony back so
really it's a wait and see thing. I've planted hawthorn, blackthorn,
holly, yews, a couple of Spanish gorse and wild rose along with the ever
present brambles and nettles, so bigger competition will eventually
limit it also.


I do not contribute all that much to this newsgroup but I do learn a great
deal :-) I have a bank down one side of the drive and would like to cover
it with wild plants, some would call them weeds but not me/us. I have
comfrey going well all over the place and use it to make liquid plant feed,
but this thread has given me some more ideas, 3 cheers for uk.rec.gardening
:-)

kate