Avoid Planting Invasive Vines

Avoid future problems by keeping invasive beauties out of your landscape.

Several common garden vines have escaped the boundaries of our gardens and moved into the surrounding natural spaces. These invaders crowd out native plants, disrupting the ecosystems needed by the birds, bees and other wildlife.

English ivy has long been used as a groundcover or trained on stone fences and buildings. This vigorous plant crawls over the ground or up and over trees and shrubs, leading to the death of these plants.

Japanese honeysuckle is adaptable, allowing it to invade the forest floor, roadside green spaces and wetlands. It girdles small trees by twining around their trunks.

Oriental bittersweet looks similar to the American bittersweet, but should not be planted. This vigorous vine engulfs and can eventually kill nearby plants.

A bit more information: Porcelain vine and Chinese wisteria are two more of the vigorous vines that are crowding out native plants in parts of North America. The porcelain vine’s colorful fall fruit and the large purple spring flowers of Chinese wisteria reveal their destructive path into our native spaces. Find out more about these and other invasive plants at: invasiveplantatlas.org and invasivespeciesinfo.gov