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Shrubbery Thuggery

“Let me have about me plants that are thugs....

deep-rooted plants, that never sleep o’ nights.”

With apologies to Shakespeare, the above is now my mantra for maintaining an illusion of control over  weeds, slugs and wetness in my garden. This summer, with its alternating drenching and roasting, has provided perfect growing conditions for all sorts of things (including diseases and pests), except those precious plants that can’t hack competition or attack.

At first glance, the garden looked passable until recently, but a discerning eye would note rampant subjects allowed to spread, weeding that’s minimal and ineffectual, and no planting of new, dewy-eyed additions. Frankly, I haven’t had time.

So, instead, I have divided and replanted in tangled areas some favourite plants that will out-bully the weeds, or hold their own against pathogens until kingdom come.

Here is a selection of my favourite garden thugs:

Yellow Loosestrife (Lysimachia punctata)

This is such good value. Sturdy, upright stems about 45cm tall, each one a spire of large yellow flowers in early to midsummer - pictured. It obligingly spreads underground to form an impressive, weed-excluding clump. Medicinally, it is astringent, useful for healing wounds, and both the flowers and roots are used in dyeing.

Sweet Woodruff (Galium odoratum)

Irresistible starry white flowers in midsummer, above a cloud of pretty foliage that just spreads and spreads. I admit, ground elder comes up through it, but the woodruff always wins. As well as being indestructible, it can be used to flavour wine or dried for use as a laundry herb.

Masterwort (Astrantia major)

This popular clump-forming perennial is just so easy and reliable. The big clumps look good for months, and persist effortlessly even when besieged by weeds. For something taller which has a similar untroubled outlook on competition, try Hemp Agrimony (Eupatorium cannabinum) pictured, which will fill a large space, repel intruders and attract bees and butterflies.

Bistort or Pudding Dock (Polygonum bistorta)

Actually most of the Polygonum family make excellent thugs. Bistort gives large edible leaves and tall flower spikes in an incandescent pink. Polygonum ‘Donald Lowndes’, popular in garden centres, is smaller, neater, but no less thuggish. Ground cover understates them!

Periwinkle (Vinca major)

The pretty blue flowers can pop open just about every month of the year, but are at their best in late spring. The foliage is evergreen; an advantage for suppressing weeds. It is another herb that controls bleeding, and year by year it is beating back the ground elder in my shrub border.

Aegopodium podagraria variegata

Which translates as variegated Ground Elder, or Bishopsweed - pictured.

It is AWFULLY pretty, very thuggish, and you can eat it too....

Wild Strawberry (Fragaria vesca)

Finally, and masochistically, there is this, so good for you, productive and delicious that we constantly overlook the fact that it is taking over Bankfoot. Be warned – choose plants to grow above it that are also thugs!

“....yon Petunia has a hot-house-hungry look; she wilts too much,

such plants are dangerous.....”

(Shakespeare, W: Julius Caesar, Act One, Scene Two – look it up!)

© Margaret Lear

www.plantswithpurpose.co.uk