Every good garden needs to be bordered with something. Many gardeners will put in miniature fences, rubber barriers, bricks, or stone in order to hold in the mulch set around flowers and shrubs. Others prefer a natural boundary, planting liriope and ornamental grass around the edges of gardens, pine islands, and driveways.
Such bordering grasses require consistent monitoring and upkeep in order to prevent them from taking over the entire garden bed. Without a dutiful gardener present, some forms of this plant can take over a whole lawn. This might not be such a problem when it comes to the lawn, as it lessens the need for mowing, but it can be a serious problem if it takes over flower or vegetable beds.
There is more than one species of this flowering border plant. One, L. Spicata, is also known by the names creeping lily-turf and monkey-grass, is a runner. It is this particular species that is known for its invasiveness because it will create a thick ground cover if left to its own devices for the season.
In the case of grasses grown for ornamentation, most of these varieties are not edible for deer, buffalo, or even cows. When entire fields of indigenous, and edible, grasses get wiped out, an environmental disaster can ensue. Species of larger animals, like the deer, can potentially go extinct due to the carelessness of many gardeners.
A foreign species can find its way to our shores as easily as hitching a ride in the grooves on the bottom of a pair of shoes. Many plants, and even some animals have been moved from one part of the Globe to another in this manner. Some are brought over intentionally for the purpose of landscaping.
Our first import from China was just such an aggressive plant. Kudzu grows quite well in the temperate climate of the Southeastern United States. While the livestock it was intended to feed would not eat it, the fields where it was first cultivated became the first death fields of healthy vines killing massive trees.
Kudzu contains over four hundred pounds of roots for every six foot by six foot patch. There is simply no way to completely eradicate it from an area unless it is bulldozed about ten feet deep and the dirt discarded elsewhere. This is just what they did, discarding the dirt near railroad lines in order to keep the weed growth off the rails.
Because it has literally hundreds of pounds of roots in every small patch, no human can really dig it up. Burning it is only a temporary solution, and one would wish to avoid doing that when the season is extremely dry. Bulldozing an area to around ten feet deep then discarding the dirt, or scorching it free of all life forms, is the only method of eradication which has shown promise.
Hopefully we humans have learned our lesson about moving plants from one part of the world to another. What is a well-controlled succulent in one country can become an out-of-control, seed-tossing, watery nightmare in another. Many of the plants that the Native Americans lived on are now believed to be extinct due to plants like kudzu and L. Spicata.
Such bordering grasses require consistent monitoring and upkeep in order to prevent them from taking over the entire garden bed. Without a dutiful gardener present, some forms of this plant can take over a whole lawn. This might not be such a problem when it comes to the lawn, as it lessens the need for mowing, but it can be a serious problem if it takes over flower or vegetable beds.
There is more than one species of this flowering border plant. One, L. Spicata, is also known by the names creeping lily-turf and monkey-grass, is a runner. It is this particular species that is known for its invasiveness because it will create a thick ground cover if left to its own devices for the season.
In the case of grasses grown for ornamentation, most of these varieties are not edible for deer, buffalo, or even cows. When entire fields of indigenous, and edible, grasses get wiped out, an environmental disaster can ensue. Species of larger animals, like the deer, can potentially go extinct due to the carelessness of many gardeners.
A foreign species can find its way to our shores as easily as hitching a ride in the grooves on the bottom of a pair of shoes. Many plants, and even some animals have been moved from one part of the Globe to another in this manner. Some are brought over intentionally for the purpose of landscaping.
Our first import from China was just such an aggressive plant. Kudzu grows quite well in the temperate climate of the Southeastern United States. While the livestock it was intended to feed would not eat it, the fields where it was first cultivated became the first death fields of healthy vines killing massive trees.
Kudzu contains over four hundred pounds of roots for every six foot by six foot patch. There is simply no way to completely eradicate it from an area unless it is bulldozed about ten feet deep and the dirt discarded elsewhere. This is just what they did, discarding the dirt near railroad lines in order to keep the weed growth off the rails.
Because it has literally hundreds of pounds of roots in every small patch, no human can really dig it up. Burning it is only a temporary solution, and one would wish to avoid doing that when the season is extremely dry. Bulldozing an area to around ten feet deep then discarding the dirt, or scorching it free of all life forms, is the only method of eradication which has shown promise.
Hopefully we humans have learned our lesson about moving plants from one part of the world to another. What is a well-controlled succulent in one country can become an out-of-control, seed-tossing, watery nightmare in another. Many of the plants that the Native Americans lived on are now believed to be extinct due to plants like kudzu and L. Spicata.
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