Sentimental Ivy
Acclaimed Author and Landscape Ethicist Rick Darke claims he finds the term “invasive” too harsh a word (“Balancing Natives and Exotics in the Garden”). And why wouldn’t he? There are so many exotics that offer us beauty, food, and even purposeful meaning. Few invasives carry this sentimentality as well as English Ivy or Hedera helix. Yet for many of us, ivy has become the quintessential symbol of “invasive plant”. I myself have stashed a few variegated forms in my shopping cart at the garden center, hoping no one will take a judgmental tone. The evergreen, festive leaves carry with them an almost compassionate familiarity and many species of Hedera hold immense cultural value.
Diana Beresford-Kroeger, one of the last living keepers of the Celtic tradition, touts Irish Ivy – Hedera hibernica – (not yet listed as invasive here in South Carolina) as a sacred plant. She relates the plant’s longevity with the it’s adorning of Celtic fireplace mantels in December (To Speak for the Trees). Celts perform this ritual as a reminder of strength and protection. Some of us may even feel a pull towards the plant as we attempt to reconnect the broken pieces of our ancestries.
In her podcast “Cultivating Place”, Jennifer Jewel makes it her mission to draw out prominent horticulturalists’ key plants, having them explain how each formed meaning with them. It is the meaning-making of the plant world that helps us understand how some of our ancestors, desperate to keep something of their homelands, encouraged their descendants to hold dear what would eventually become our devastating invasive plant situation. In this way, early colonizers spread the troubles of Manifest Destiny from the human kingdom to the plant kingdom.
But in the dim light of these lessons, we can theorize with Beresford-Kroeger, also a prominent Botanist, that Hedera species in their native lands may have benefits. She believes ivy might hare auxin (the growth hormone common to most plant life) with the trees it inhabits. While she has not yet verified this particular hypothesis, she does have a “good guess” track record.
Perhaps we can keep to this hopeful thought, and imagine a future where the persistence of ivy in North America may one day be in reciprocal balance. The jury is not out, however, on the present-day balance. Here, the scales are tipped in favor of ivy and not of the trees. Celtic Ivy was once representative of the fine balance between famine and cultivation, but it has become too prosperous outside its homeland and now only symbolizes a monoculture of hard, unnecessary labor in our gardens.
The extension office of the University of Maryland describes ivy as “a threat at all height levels.” In a personal interview with Sarah Justice, who achieved her forestry degree from Western Carolina University in 2019, I learned that natives Poison Ivy and Virginia Creeper are “well behaved”. She explains: “[Native climbers’] aerial roots grip the outer layer of bark almost like frog toes, but English Ivy’s aerial roots burrow in and hold onto the cambium layer of the tree.” It deprives trees of nutrients, killing them much too quickly, which the Reed College of Oregon describes in their Reed River enhancement project.
Contrast that with Virginia Creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia), dropping its leaves in winter so that the host tree does not have to support any undue weight during difficult months. On the forest floor ivy’s evergreen foliage does not function with the same compassion. Choking out young seedlings and herbaceous plants, it prevents the opportunity for understory native plants to succeed into the next generation (University of Maryland Extension).
In “Balancing Natives and Exotics in the Garden”, Rick Darke puts it another way, saying that while no plant has a “war-like consciousness [...] so-called invasives wouldn’t exist unless they were better adapted to current conditions [...] it is critical that we recognize that the displacement we are witnessing is primarily the result of plants responding to human impact on the environment.” Gardeners, then, have a responsibility to be aware of the process of displacement of native plants and their associated ecologies. To intervene with this trajectory, we have a variety of actionable steps that begin with our gardens. Combatting invasive monocultures benefits more than just ourselves and provides food and habitat for other essential creatures in our ecosystem. The more invasives we remove, the more opportunities we give our natives to co- evolve with non-natives, reaching towards equilibrium. We have the choice to intervene on behalf of evolution, coaxing on the process in order to correct past errors.
So still your beating heart as you bag up your ivy for the trash-bin-coffin and I’ll be doing the same. Do not let the seeds lie in wait. New plant relationships can form in the open space. Come to know, instead, the evergreen foliage of plants like Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens) as a replacement for ivy in winter-ready planters. The red berries carry that same fortitude and protective sentiment of ivy. For a two-in-one spiller/ thriller combo, consider one of our native leucothoe shrubs. The arching branches reach well below the rim of their containers creating the same flowing texture as ivy. The cultivar “Rainbow” boasts variegated foliage with pink-red tinges on the new growth.
Our well- intentioned ancestors brought meaning through plant mainstays like English Ivy, but it is up to us to claim responsibility where they could not, reinterpreting these unforeseen consequences. Invasive mistakes have become almost paradigmatic of “Manifest Destiny” and this should encourage us to leave behind reductionist semantics. Rather than debate the notion that the word “invasive” is “too harsh” a term, let’s replace those harsh plants themselves with native ecologies in our gardens. Doing this honors the ancestral gifts of ivy, reminding us to make new, culturally significant plant relationships. Holding onto the lesson – not the invasive plants themselves – we give native ecologies a chance to speak to us wherever and however we are willing to listen.
