Invasive Garden Plants: 10 Shrubs, Perennials, and Vines to Avoid

Many invasive garden plants find their way into our landscaping by accident, but there are others which we may inadvertently invite. It usually starts innocently enough with some exotic ornamental plant, imported to North America for its unusual blooms, striking foliage, or other specific use. But in no time flat our carefully selected new garden guests can go as rogue as kudzu. These invasive species may crowd out other cultivated plants or, worse, escape from our gardens altogether. Depending on their level of success in the wild, they can displace important native species and fundamentally alter environmentally sensitive natural habitat. Discover 10 invasive garden plants to avoid, and (if it’s too late) how to get rid of them.

Invasive garden plants are those species which prove to have some clear competitive advantages over other plants growing nearby. Some of these advantages include:

• Growing and multiplying rapidly, whether by producing many new shoots, releasing a prolific amount of seed, or spreading by underground rhizomes
• Thriving in a variety of growing conditions and throughout multiple hardiness zones
• Emerging very early in the spring or surviving beyond late fall and sometimes even into winter
• Lacking many natural insect or animal predators

Due to these and other advantages, invasive plants can threaten the ecosystem as a whole. By outcompeting native vegetation, invasive garden plants choke out biodiversity, and the insects, birds, small mammals, and other creatures which depend on specific natives for their food and shelter ultimately lose out.

What we now know to be invasive garden plants were, in many cases, once just intriguing or