For illustrated talks on natural history and history see www.peterlovetttalks.co.uk

For illustrated talks on natural history and history click here for www.peterlovetttalks.co.uk

Monday 22 January 2018

Controlling Spanish bluebells

A former owner of my garden planted Spanish bluebells, which threaten our more delicate native ones with hybridisation.
For years I have hoed off the leaves as they appear and especially the flowers if I missed any, dug up the bulbs and dried them to kill them, and am now trying a different approach.
Emerging leaves are easily pulled off now.
The ground is wet and soft now and the Spanish bluebell leaves are just emerging.
The leaves break off underground if they are grasped by hand and pulled out.
If this works to kill them off, I'll update this entry later in the year.
With my talk The evolution of a formal garden to a nature reserve at http://www.peterlovetttalks.co.uk/page19.html  it is important to me to get rid of Spanish bluebells completely.

2 comments:

Elizabeth Conway said...

Hello Peter, any update on how effective pulling the leaves of Spanish bluebells has been?
Thanks
Elizabeth

Sussexrambler said...

Some success Elizabeth
I am today going to pull out or hoe out the emerging leaves where the bulbs were not all removed.
Regular attacks prevent them thriving vegetatively and pulling out any flowers later with the leaf rosette may eventually get rid of them.
Regards
Peter

Blog Archive