Native plants I don’t like in my garden
Invasive species (meaning a plant which is both non-native AND aggressive) are definitely not welcome in my garden. For the most part, I try to leave native plants alone when they pop up. But some plants are just…. too much for the home garden. Oftentimes the reason these plants are so aggressive is that they are not native to your ecoregion. For example, before buying a plant, I might check to make sure that it’s native to North America but not realize it’s really meant for the sprawling prairies of Iowa. With my extra Atlanta rainfall and humidity, and without similar competing plants to keep it in check, that nice prairie plant might completely take over my yard. It’s often not enough to just look at the growing zone and whether it’s native to your continent or country. Looking at your specific ecoregion is a great place to start dialing in which plants are truly native to your area. Atlanta is in an ecoregion called the Piedmont (8.3.4) or even more specifically, ecoregion 45b the Southern Inner Piedmont. But if you just looked at our Level I ecoregion (8), that would put Atlanta in in the same category as both Orlando and Chicago. You can see how that might cause issues!
Goldenrod often gets blamed for the late summer and fall seasonal allergies caused by Ragweed (pictured above). Ragweed can be too aggressive and more trouble than it’s worth.
Qwert1234, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
On the other hand, some species of plants actually are native to your ecoregion, but they are just sort of undesirable in a home garden setting for one reason or another. They might play an important part in our local ecosystems, but have unpleasant surprises for humans like itchy rashes or prickly briars. Regardless of the reason, here are a few “native” plants that are usually an unwelcome sight in my landscape:
Poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) — it’s really a shame that so many of us are allergic to this plant, because it provides tremendous value to wildlife including birds, insects, mammals, and reptiles. If you have an area of your property you really don’t access, consider leaving it alone!
Greenbriar (Smilax) — apparently the leaves, roots, and young shoots of this plant are edible, but I haven’t tried it. Deer, black bear, rabbits, and even beavers like to eat it, so definitely let it grow if you are managing hunting land! But in the home garden, it is a prickly, painful, unpredictable, and persistent frustration. It grows from huge underground tubers and is very, very hard to remove. If you chop down one shoot, more will pop up in other spots. It loves to climb a chain link fence. Most people recommend trying to dig it up, but I suspect I might dig up my entire yard if I tried that.
Trumpet creeper (Campsis radicans) — this flowering vine is absolutely gorgeous in bloom and great for wildlife, so I want to love it, but it’s just too aggressive for most home landscapes. It spreads by both suckers and seed, and it can choke out other plants trying to climb them for light. Some people have an allergic reaction to it, so it’s sometimes called Cow-Itch Vine. If you have tons of wild space for it to roam, it will reward you with stunning orange-red blossoms and lots of hummingbirds. I like seeing it blooming all summer on the roadside. For a less aggressive alternative (although it still needs to be kept in check), try the closely related semi-evergreen Crossvine (Bignon capreolata), or Coral honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens), which I don’t find aggressive at all.
Ragweed (Ambrosia astemisiifolia) — spreads very aggressively by seed, and its pollen causes absolutely terrible seasonal allergies in late summer / fall. Many people blame beautiful Goldenrod (which is much more valuable to pollinators) for their allergies because it blooms around the same time in a much more showy way.
Dog fennel (Eupatorium capillifolium) — it smells bad and it grows too large, too aggressively, and it’s too hard to remove once it’s planted. It spreads by seed and will regrow from broken stems. It also supposedly attracts wasps, which I already have plenty of in my garden, thank you very much. Better off swaying in the wind on a distant roadside than in my yard.
Spotted spurge (Euphorbia maculata) — will grow essentially anywhere, even in gravel or a sidewalk crack, and will spread rapidly by seed. It grows too low for mowing to have any effect, so you have to pull by hand and get every bit of the stem out, or it will grow back. It does provide a bit of wildlife value, but I don’t think it’s worth the trouble in the home garden. I pull it when I see it, but I also don’t worry about it too much.
Common milkweed and tropical milkweed (Ascepias syriaca and curassavica) — common milkweed is from the Northern/Midwestern US. It can push out the many milkweeds native to GA, which are absolutely critical for our monarch population’s survival. Tropical milkweed is from Central America and the Caribbean, and while it thrives in much of the southern US, it can spread a deadly parasite to monarch butterflies. And since it keeps blooming all summer, it can trick the butterflies into staying in your area too long when they really need to be migrating down to Mexico, causing them to die once it gets too cold! Monarch butterflies are 100% dependent on milkweeds to survive, and their population already took a devastating 59% hit in 2024. Let’s do whatever we can to help them out and plant only the milkweeds meant for our local areas!
Poison ivy is best kept out of areas we frequent for obvious reasons, but lots of harmless plants are lookalikes. The real thing has a reddish stem, and its pointed leaves come in sets of 3.
Some other “assertive” native plants that some people may consider weedy, but I think are worth the trouble of managing include: eastern redbud (cercis canadensis), black cherry (prunus serotina), pine (pinus taeda), carolina cherry laurel (prunus caroliniana), native violet (viola sororia), white woodland aster (aster lateriflorus), yellow passionflower (passiflora lutea), wild strawberry (fragaria virginiana), and elderberry (sambucus canadensis). Different plants work for different people depending on their location, growing conditions, and gardening habits— so this topic can be pretty subjective. You could tough it out and learn purely by trial and error, or you could get a little advice to help steer you in the right direction. Unruly Roots can provide garden consulting services to help you identify the plants already in your landscape, and help you choose which ones to add to your garden with confidence! Learn more about working together here. Good luck out there!
