this is for experienced gardeners?

Question

what should i do about my large leaved canary islands ivy that i have grown over my shed for 9 years but has now attached itself to my house,also what damage can it do to my roof

Answer 1

Are you trying to kill the thing and fix the damage, or to have it grow somewhere else? Anyway, it seems to have found its niche, so just don't let it grow there again. To fix the damage, ivies should never be allowed to grow on a house. So first, prevention. Those ivy-covered buildings in England that look so great consist of huge blocks of limestone (probably) and have been there 1000 years in one form or another, so solid stone appears to be okay to let it grow on. Anyway, the damage is done, so do this: take a large paint scraper and appropriate cutting tools geared to the stem size, and gently approach what I assume would be a thick stem and try to detach it from the building. If it is a wood structure, there's probably decay from trapped moisture. If it is sided with vinyl or aluminum, it probably sustained less damage. You'll have to remove it in sections. Pulling it off in large pieces will be hard on you, and being attached to the building, it could pull off pieces of it. If this is still not possible, just cutting it from the main plant will cause it to die, and eventually it will become easier to remove over time. Any action more vigourous (use of chemicals or large tools) will risk damage to the building. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Ivy is a great plant to hide or even beautify a structure or even a landscape, but the problem with it is it will grow every where if you allow it to, several things you can do with it is either transport it to a tree to let it grow up and around it, if you have a privacy fence or even a chain link fence it would make a great back drop for decorating, as for what kinda damage it can do to your roof, well you have to think about the whole house, it can cause siding to pop off, allow water to get into the structure and cause rot and mildew, it can grow up under the shingles and decrease the life of your shingles and also low water to get up under them and cause the roof to leak and the wood to rot, I have seen it even pull stucco of the walls and large cracks to appear to, i would be very leery as to let it grow on any structure unless you don't mind paying somebody to come out and fix all the damage caused by the ivy.

Answer 3

Cut it back hard. I have one and do this regularly. Makes it prodice nice fresh leaves too so it looks better. It will take some of the weight out of the plant too so this will be better for your shed. Keep it away from your house - can do serious damage to your roof and brickwork.

Answer 4

Prune it hard back to where you just want it to grow (over the shed). You will need to constantly cut it back at the end of each year to avoid the same thing happening again.

Yes it can do damage to the brickwork and it also harbours lots of bugs'n things.

Answer 5

You can give it a very hard prune. It won't hurt the plant. Ivy is a beautiful creeping plant, but can get out of control. You should keep it tidy so that this doesn't happen again.

Answer 6

I'm not sure how attached you are to it but it will certainly do your property enormous damage cut all the steams and the main one and the ones above it will die off and with a bit of luck you will be able to pull it all off

Answer 7

Your brickwork will suffer & once these things get a hold the damage could be infinitum the last thing you want is a new roof.

Answer 8

Is there some reason why you cannot cut them back? I would think they could cause mold to grow under the ivy, attracting bugs, and such.