how to get rid of ivy in a wall

janfran

I have a dry stone wall at the bottom of my garden and ivy (planted by the previous gardener) grows inside the wall. I have removed all the ivy from the ground but it grows well enough just in the wall. Although I know about wildlife and carbon footprint and all that, it is damaging the wall. What can I do?

 

BobTheGardener

Keep spraying all new growth with glyphosate.  Don't pull-out the sprayed growth, as the glyphosate needs to work its way to the roots.  It will take a long time before the ivy dies completely as the leaves tend to repel most of the weedkiller, but it will eventually work.  The only alternative is to rebuild the wall, but that would be very costly.

Dovefromabove

ooo 'eck!  When you say dry stone wall, do you mean a proper one made without mortar?  If so you're in with a chance - cut the ivy back, treat fresh young growth with Brushwood Killer and let it take effect.  If it regrows repeat and repeat ad infinitum until you don't get any regrowth.  Depending on how big the roots are you might need to get a dry-stone-waller to take part of the wall down, remove the roots and rebuild.  Hopefully you won't have to do that as it could be expensive unless you have a friendly neighbour who is good at dry stone walling.

If the wall has mortar, the initial treatment is the same, but you'll definitely have to take the wall down, remove the roots and rebuild if the roots have got into it and dried the mortar out.

We've just had a 12 metre length of brick wall rebuilt because of damage done to the footings by ivy roots 

Good luck