Dread ground elder


There are some plants that every gardener dreads - and this is one of them. This 'wonderful' specimen was one of many that infested our garden a couple of years ago; it does grow wild, but I've never actually seen it growing wild anywhere locally (we're not far from The Wash, in the Anglia region), only up in Cumbria.  It must have come from somewhere, though.  

It's a member of the carrot family, but I don't suppose it will help anyone see in the dark.  From a distance, the flowers are just a nondescript umbellifer, but at a close look, like when I took this photo, I can't help thinking that it's actually rather beautiful.  

At the end of last year, we paid a gardener to remove a number of shrubs (especially self-seeded ones) and to take things back to lawn and bare earth. We have created a new wildflower bed where some of the shrubs were; my favourite of the self-seeded blooms so far is the feverfew.  What we don't have is ground elder reaching the flowering stage - it gets dealt with everywhere and every time it appears.

I still think it showed its best profile here.


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