Beware Of This Creeping Plant: A Beautiful Menace In Your Garden

IT'S A CREEPER

When it comes to gardening, the beauty of flowers can sometimes cause great pain, especially if you have fallen victim to the beauty and allure of The Creeping Bellflower.

HOW DECEPTIVE IT CAN BE

You may have thought at first, how lovely the flowers are. They grow tall on one side of the plant, in a beautiful shade of purple/blue, and are shaped like bells. With so many flowers they appear to be a delight for every gardener's eyes.

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THE DANGERS OF CREEPING BELLFLOWER

However, once Creeping BellFlower is in your midst, it will take over.

The bell-shaped flowers that grow up one side of the stalk, can carry up to 15,000 seeds. Once they take root, look out. The plant spreads by seed dispersal and root propagation. If you have small sections of creeping bellflower, you may be able to manage it early on, but it's not easy to manage. You need to remove ALL of the plant roots and repeating that removal may be necessary multiple times.

Listen to my interview with Stearns County Master Gardener Bill Cook from our discussion on Wednesday, July 31st, 2024 on "It Matters with Kelly Cordes" on WJON by clicking on the player below.

THE SPREAD

The plant can grow to be between 2 and 3 feet tall and is no competition for any other lovely plants growing in your gardens.

Since it spreads by seed and by roots, it can start creeping through your yard, and you may not even know it's there until it's too late.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR

If you are trying to identify where early Creeping Bellflower might be located, look for leaves at the base of the plant. They are heart-shaped, (go figure) but start becoming shorter and narrower moving up the plant stem as they grow. The leaves alternate with slightly hairy undersides and have coarse jagged edges.

STEMS

The stems have a milky sap when broken and the roots are a combination of large tubers, rhizomes, and smaller thin roots, which new plants can form from.

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The good news about Creeping Bellflower is that if it is growing in your yard, it cannot flower if you mow regularly. You can also pull the plants with all the roots, and either burn them or bag them. Chemical control is most effective when you try to get rid of them in the fall.

The other good news is that some of our native bees and bugs benefit from it, but it definitely will win all battles against any other kind of flowering plant in its midst.