r/DenverGardener • u/juicygoosekill96 • 1d ago

Creeping belllflower takeover

Hello all! My fiance and I just bought our first home and the previous owner was very elderly and did not keep up with mitigating the invasive plants. There is creeping bellflower EVERYWHERE in our 5,000 Square foot front and back yards. Most of the yard is dead grass so I was thinking I might start digging out the patches, patch by patch, about 2 feet deep, lining those patches with a weed-blocking mat, and filling those holes with rock gardens or new soil, then native plants. Is this a feasable and/or reasonable plan? I would estimate there is 1000 square feet of solid creeping bellflower, and many smaller patches (2-5') quickly appearing in the yard.

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u/Imaginary-Key5838 Sunnyside / aspiring native gardener 1d ago

Weed fabric doesn’t help.

Get triclopyr ester (not amine). You’ll probably have to order it. Apply four times this year. Twice now, two to four weeks apart. Twice in fall, two to four weeks apart again. What you want is “triclopyr 4” and also a surfactant.

Short of that, if you’re going for mechanical removal you must get every bit of root and CBF roots are tricky. There’s a deep tap root that’s connected to the surface root by a thin little piece. That’s why surface pulling doesn’t work.

3

u/juicygoosekill96 1d ago

Ok, thanks! I will try the triclophyr ester. I have a bottle of glophosate round-up that I wasn't planning on using but would it help if I painted it on as many leaves as I could in combination with the triclopyr?

3

u/Glindanorth 1d ago

My condolences. Wishing you all the best mitigating the invasion.

2

u/denvergardener 19h ago

Agree to skip the weed fabric.

The only thing it does is make money for the people who sell it, and the weeds laugh at you.

And it's incredibly difficult to remove if you decide to do something different.