A swine of a vine: why you should plant Russian vine at your peril

I have been wondering, in the style of Alien vs Predator, what would win in a showdown between Russian vine and leylandii.

In my last garden, it was a big leyland cypress that overhung my fence and overshadowed my garden that got on my wick. I had thought that my troubles were over when I moved to a garden with very little in the way neighbouring trees to block out the light. Then last week I noticed some tendrils covered in white frothy flowers insinuating themselves among my rosemary. Uh-oh: Russian vine.

Fallopia baldschuanica, aka Russian vine, aka mile-a-minute, is a devil of a climber. Traditionally people have lobbed one into the ground when they want to rapidly obliterate a view of an ugly shed or border fence. Only when it's too late - this plant being virtually unkillable - do people realise what they've unleashed. I've spotted huge ribbons of it - some 50m long - festooning back gardens on my train journey into London. It's a relative of Japanese knotweed, so it's easy to see why it's so tough and virulent.

There are lots of other climbers that are rampant enough to cover the most unsightly structures, but ultimately controllable if you're attentive (Clematis armandii and Jasminum officinale, to name two). Yet nurseries still advertise Russian vine (the RHS plant finder lists 33 of them). Why? They should be paying you danger money to plant it.

So what can you do if Russian vine is choking your garden? The advice is usually to cut it back to the ground and apply a stump-killing weedkiller to the stump. I haven't unearthed a solution for organic gardeners though: at the moment all I've done is chopped off the bit of growth that's over my side of the fence.

Have you regretted planting Russian vine in your garden, or is your neighbours mile-a-minute invading your garden? Any eradication advice - organic or otherwise? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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