They’re pretty, but they’re aggressive. Many of those in this picture, taken only a few days ago, are now history, slaughtered to make growing room for something we like better.

Spanish Bluebells

The garden is in peak-energy mode; lots of moisture in the ground and several successive days of sunshine. You can almost hear it growing.



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From: whimsy (May 26 2009, at 12:00)

Best of luck with that. If they are aggressive the way the english bluebells are you'll find yourself surgically digging out all the dirt in the existing bed and either relocating is somewhere you want the bluebells, high-temp composting it to kill the seeds and bulbs. Or, pulling bluebells as they pop every year.

We tried digging one bed of english bluebells out (to a 4 ft depth - that is as far down as we found bulbs) - triple sifted the thousands of bulbs out using 3/4 and 1/2 in screens (before the flowers seeded, mind you) ~ we found the bulbs were big as elephant garlic and small as the eye can see ~ so KNEW we missed some. This year we've pulled a dozen bulbs evidenced by new green leaves popping up in the bed... Curious to see what shows next year. A cousin is on year 5 of this process in her yard and some still pop up.

In bed 2 we're just going to dig out all the dirt. The 3 days of sifting bed one was too much work for the value since we have a place to "safely" relocate the dirt in bed 2.

Best in your journey with the bluebells. The pretty scourge they are.

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From: Lucas (May 31 2009, at 16:24)

Trying to get rid of aggressive plants is difficult and frustrating! Whenever someone offers to give me a plant, if they tell me it is aggressive, I decline. Or I put it in pots and grow it only on my patio! Good luck getting rid of them!

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From: Walter (Jun 01 2009, at 11:39)

Seems such a waste to kill off such pretty flowers, oh well back tomy grumpy world. Thanks for the pretty pic.

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From: Tina Eastridge (Jun 25 2009, at 19:13)

A friend gave me a ton of spanish bluebells and I planted them last summer/fall. I got plenty of green stems but only two plants produced any flowers at all. Can you give me any advice on how to get them to flower next year?

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