Keep out of my garden! This admonition is directed at horseradish, mint, and garlic chives — three incorrigible plants that once disrupted my garden. Once again, it’s time to look around at new growth poking up through the ground, and make sure these plants are gone for good. I now know that the place for such plants is a patch kept in bounds with a lawnmower; or a semi-wild back corner where their unruly manners can be used to advantage, or at least ignored.
By far the worst offender, the most unruly plant, in my experience has been horseradish. Years ago I wisely decided to get rid of some horseradish I foolishly had planted amongst some berry plants. Ha! Try digging it up. The most thorough digging does not remove every bit of root, and even the smallest bits of root resprout leaves and start growing again.
I even once came across a research articles in a horticultural journal, a journal whose articles are usually devoted to optimizing plant growth, exploring various ways of permanently ridding an area of horseradish.
I tried starving the horseradish roots by repeatedly cutting off the leaves, and new leaves just kept pushing out. After diligent digging and leaf removal, I did rid my garden of horseradish — but it took three years!
Horseradish is one of the few plants I’m even afraid to put into my compost pile. The traditional method for disposing of quackgrass should be equally effective for horseradish: Pull it up, burn it, then spread the ashes where you’re sure you’ll never want it to grow.
Garlic chives, a clump of which I once planted just inside my garden gate, is another plant that frightens me. Each plant self-seeded, and the following year was surrounded by a score of new plants.
I usually have no aversion to weeding, but trying to weed out garlic chives is an unsatisfying task. The seedlings cling tenaciously to the soil, the strap-like leaves are slippery, and when you finally get hold of them, they snap off, leaving the roots intact to resprout.
I suppose I could snip off the flower heads so seeds do not form in the first place, but if I did grow this plant, I would want to see the starlike balls of white flowers at least as much as I would want to taste the garlicky flavor of the leaves.
Mint is almost as bad as horseradish. Wherever I see a sprig of mint poke up through the ground, I know that there’s an underground stem pushing a foot or more distant, from which will sprout new sprigs, ad infinitum.
Early on in my gardening life, I read that mint would deter cabbage worms. So I stuck sprigs (they root easily) between cabbage plants. The next spring, I found a lacy mesh of mint stems radiating just beneath the surface of the ground. I spent a month tracing the courses of these stems, combing them out of the soil, and finally ridding my garden of mint.
Some other garden foes
Though I consider horseradish, garlic chives, and mint the most unruly plants, there are others. I am especially wary of any plant that spreads where I can’t see — underground. Or any plant whose stems arch to the ground and root.
Tansy and yarrow spread both these ways. I do grow both these plants in my garden proper, but I annually hack back their tops and chop back their roots to keep them within bounds.
Certain gooseberry varieties have a similar wanderlust. Lepaa Red, a vigorous variety from Finland, must be the horseradish of gooseberries; I keep finding plants a couple of feet or more from the mother bush. It needs the same treatment as do tansy and yarrow.
I also am wary of plants which, like garlic chives and horseradish, either self-seed too readily or repeatedly sprout from root pieces. Self-seeded dill and borage are welcome in my garden, in moderation. I annually weed out excess. These seedlings, unlike those of garlic chives, are easy to uproot, so with a little diligence, they never get out of hand.
Jerusalem artichoke plants repeatedly sprout from even the smallest tubers left in the soil. But the plants just keep sprouting, not really spreading, so the weed status of Jerusalem artichoke is far eclipsed by that of horseradish.
Beware of bad behavior
I am not advising against planting any of these potentially unruly plants. All have assets to offset their bad behavior — the yellow, button-like flowers and pungent aroma of tansy; the garlicky flavor and white-flowered umbels of garlic chives; the pungent, sinus-clearing flavor of horseradish; etc.
Garlic chives still resides here, on the other side of my house from my vegetable garden. Every year towards the end of summer, the white umbels of flowers look and are right at home along a stone wall.
Mint similarly enjoys its present home in a bed bounded on one side by lawn and on the other by bricks of my terrace.
Horseradish? If I want it, I just go out and buy it.
Such plants dramatically demonstrate that a weed is merely a plant in the wrong place.
Lee Reich, author of The Pruning Book and many other books, is also a garden consultant specializing in growing fruits, vegetables and nuts. He hosts workshops at his New Paltz farmden. Go to www.leereich.com.
Join the family! 
