Invasive Plants Garden Removal

I have been struggling with my best sunny location in the garden. Every year the invasive plants grab a little more from this bed. In 2009 I barely got any grip on it at all until the past few weeks.


Above in where the garden is located with a veiw of the pond, has room for lots of improvement. That huge clump of grass is a monster, the clump is likely 2-3 foot across and 8 foot high it has to go!

This bed had lots of wild black berries move in to the bed itself on the left side, I pulled them out weeks ago. In the front this 'annual' ornamental grass with blackish seed heads was grabbing the left and center front lawn hiding my Tennessee flat rock wall altogether. The center of the garden was(still is) this mountain mint given to me by a friend, it has taken over the entire center of the bed and mixed in with the ornamental grass in the center front. On the right side front there was 8-10 huge Bronze Fennels, I have pulled them out with 2 foot long roots. Between all of this are some beautiful large plox, some asters and salvias all mostly hidden in the mess this garden is.

My plan is to make a stone/treated lumber path along the back side of the garden on the pond slope and build a retaining wall out of concrete blocks, wine bottles (yes I said wine bottles)and stones set in a homemade mortar.



Above is the proposed path with the white arrows, it is fairly steep and some drainage comes there. The bed itself drops down about a foot on the back side right now, hoping I'll be able to level it off more and swale away the drainage at the same time or put in a drainage pipe under the garden.


Click on any of these images to enlarge them.
Above the white arrows show phase one, the path for the first garden patch. The red arrows show where I'll dig in some stone steps down to the pond, this is about 12 or so steps I think. The pink arrows show the proposed path for the second garden path phase three.



The paths I hope will be my weed control, before you could not walk behind the garden unless it was bone dry, otherwise the mud would slide you down the hillside. So this allowed the weeds go crazy and eventually walking was blocked by the weeds. The paths will be a lot of work digging and moving the soil on the hillside by hand. Hoping the end result will make the curb appeal awesome.

So you might ask what I have been doing with the weeds I have been pulling? I haul the weeds to behind the pond where I have a weed pile filling the ravine and setting the plants in the air so they can not set in roots (lets hope anyway). That pile could easily fill a large dump truck.