Ivyshed from shedworking.co.uk
Ivy (Hedera) can be a wonderful plant: evergreen, fast to grow, many coloured and with the ability to clamber over a multitude of sins. It can also provide insulation and a natural habitat for birds and animals in your garden, but at what price to your walls?
Ivy before trimming
While cutting back ivy covering a wall, damage done to the bricks, hitherto unnoticed, was revealed.
The top layer of bricks has been lifted off most of the wall
and the roots have burrowed into the mortar in large sections too.
Damage done will have to be repaired now to avoid a more costly intervention a few years down the road.
Speaking to the Brick Development Association (yes, I really did), they would warn against planting Ivy against walls, because, as seen above, the roots do infiltrate the mortar. They say the problem with Ivy, is when you want to remove it, as is so entangled that it will inevitably damage the wall. If you do want to remove it, they recommend cutting it at the roots and leaving it to die back for TWO YEARS! , before carefully removing the plant from the wall. As a gardener, I wouldn’t like to see a dead or dying plant in a garden for this length of time.
However the better shape the mortar is in to begin with, the easier to control the Ivy with regular pruning and possibly cutting Ivy right down to the ground every few years. Quite a task and obviously cutting right back would leave a bare wall for a good few months until the Ivy grew back again. Not ideal.
An alternative to Ivy, if you have a south or west facing wall and if it is sheltered and in a mild climate, may well be Trachelospermum jasminoides (Star Jasmin). It too provides evergreen coverage of large areas, with the added bonus of wonderful scent from mid to late summer.
Wisteria pic from threadspider.wordpress.com
Or a magnificent Wisteria if you have a south-facing wall. Not evergreen, but in winter you still have a very beautiful sculptural framework to look at. Worth considering, although it would take many years to achieve this marvellous growth above!
As a non gardener I have to say that, personally I have a genuine grudge against Ivy as: a) it recently took me a whole day to uproot the stuff that grown from the trees at the back of my flower beds into and under my lawn, and b) whilst up a ladder trying to cut the stuff down last Summer I fell of and broke my arm in three places. (“Don’t go to those places” – Tommy Cooper). However there is apparently now an alternative view – see link below to story in the Daily Mail.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1278430/Why-ivy-creeping-walls-home-actually-protect-building-thanks-thermal-shield.html
Yours, about to buy so more Ivy killer, John Sansom.
All very helpful and illuminating. Liked the chive flower idea, I have often wondered about their culinary use.
Also, just removed a whole load of blinking ivy, what a nightmare.
Do keep me posted.
Thank you Naomi.
Do come and see us again.
While this request may seem out of the ordinary given the subject of your blog, I wondered if I might have your permission to use the third photo here to accompany a fictional piece I have written in the continuing saga of Stick Chick. In this episode, she’s lost in a maze with ivy-covered walls. Thanks in advance.