Violet Aggression

Heart shaped leaves. Lovely little dark purple or white flowers. Green lushness. Who would have guessed such a nice ground cover would become a rampant pest. Well, I should have.

I didn’t plant it and yet these wild violets have emerged and spread throughout the garden at an alarming rate. Beware the Wild Violets!

Now I spend my evenings digging it out and plan to spray any new shoots with Round-up. This is what it has come to. Ugh. What a chore.

I think this weed got past me by being so nice looking and I was further seduced by my Mothers exclamation of “oh look, violets!”. She loves them, but now I know the reason they call them “wild” violets.

So just a warning- Beware the wild violets! Don’t let them go crazy in your garden or they will squeeze out all the nice plants that you have actually planted! They are one of those plants that gets underneath other plants, like roses. So hard to get them out in those tight places.

An update to this blog. I was aggrieved to see that these plants grow in New Hampshire, as well as California, and are equally as aggressive. The snow helps a bit but they are taking over the lawn here :o( Luckily, the lawn gets mowed and the combination fertilizer with weed control helps with weeds in lawns.

Nothing worse than having weeds follow one all the way to the opposite coast of the U.S.!