How to get rid of Lilly of the valley? Its taken over!

Lilly of the Valley is a very invasive plant. The only way I have been able to destroy the plant is repeated digging to remove the stems/roots until they are gone. Unfortunately, if it has already taken over other ground cover, you may lose that too.

google landscape barrier root bamboo . It will show you a variety of plastic panels that you hammer into the soil to enclose the lily of the valley.

Bill, it spreads underground so in order to get rid of it you have to eradicate the root system and rhizomes, and quite frankly good luck with that because it will never be all gone if even a little of the rooting or rhizome is left. I have searched the web looking for an answer for you but they all say the same tihng.... you are going to have to transplant the plants you DON'T want to kill (making sure there are no lily of the valley rhizomes among the root systems of the other plants), ad then kill the entire area where the lily of the valley flowers are growing. To do that you must completely block out any light and air they can get. You will have to put down a thick layer (about 6 shhets deep) of newspaper and wet it down thoroughly, cover it with some corrugated cardboard a bit larger than the paper is and weight it down with some bricks or heavy stones or logs and wet THAT down thoroughly. THEN cover thatwith mulch that you will (say it with me ...) wet down thoroughly. Leave it all in place for at least a year. By then the plants themselves, along with their rooting systems, should be dead. I wish I could give you better news than that, but I have to be honest with you about it. That's the best way. Good Luck and thanks for asking Hometalk for help.

You pretty much have to dig up the Lily of the valley to make sure you get all the roots. The other would be to paint weed killer on the leaves, especially close to the soil and it may get down to the roots and kill them without affecting your other ground cover. Another way would be to cut the leaf fairly close to the ground and paint the weed killer on the stump only. by brushing it on it won't get on your other ground cover because of spray spreading in the breeze. You may have to repeat this, Lily of the Valley is very tenacious.

You will have to dig up the section where you don't want the lily of the valley and separate the roots from the ground cover you want, replant what you want to keep. Lily of the valley spreads through the root system and is very invasive, so be prepared to do this each year.

dig up