Thursday, October 1, 2026
For donkey's years, we’ve known English ivy is a menace to our trees, forests, and landscapes, but it’s remained legal to sell ivy plants.
Earlier this month, in response to popular demand, the state’s Department of Agriculture finally criminalized ivy sales. While they were at it, they banned the sale of 18 other species of invasive, harmful non-native plants.
These actions were spurred by native plant experts and advocates, local environmental stewardship organizations, county noxious weed control boards, and birders. No one showed up to oppose the action, which is formally called a plant quarantine listing.
But “quarantine” is an odd term to apply to plants like ivy, which is far too widespread to be rounded up and confined. The same is true for the little geranium robertium, often reviled as “Stinky Bob,” which is also ubiquitous at forest edges and along trails.
Because it is small and charming (and only smelly when you disturb it) it finds refuge in many local gardens. And because it grows along trails, it’s likely that people unintentionally take its seeds home on their shoes. But its charm is lost on those who’ve seen it completely crowd out native plant seedlings on a rainforest nurse log.
Some anti-invasives advocates also proposed adding English holly, fragrant water lily, English laurel, and Himalayan blackberry to the quarantine list, but to no avail. English holly is farmed, so it has defenders. Himalayan blackberries also have fans among beekeepers, but they didn’t even bother to comment, probably confident that no amount of legal action would shrink the aggressive, grow-anywhere blackberries’ range for long.
The whole business of managing invasive plant species is fraught, because science and opinion constantly collide. So do the economic interests of people who benefit from invasives and those who are harmed by them. Beekeepers profit from blackberry honey. Holly growers profit from a tree species that can do harm in a wild forest.
Back in the day, the state regulatory framework to deal with “noxious weeds,” a synonym for harmful but not necessarily toxic non-native plants, was mostly designed to benefit farmers, who were trying to keep them out of their fields and pastures. Even now, our state has a lot of farmers, and protecting their crops is a high priority.
Naturally, farmers often struggle with native plants that invade their fields and need to be controlled too. But while farmers have historically wanted the government to control non-native weeds, they were not interested in government control of natives. And the ag scientists at Washington State University, whose opinions were important in shaping state policy, leaned hard on focusing on control of non-native invasives.
State weed policy dates back to 1888. And the influx of non-native invasive plants dates back to the invasion of non-native settlers that arrived here starting in about 1845. The plants and seeds they brought with them, both on purpose and accidentally, changed the state’s landscape.
The advent of an environmental protection movement came about a century later. But even now, no one is seriously considering changing the name of the state’s Noxious Weed Control Board to the Invasive Plant Control Board. Ditto the many County Weed Control Boards.
So what will all the weed boards do about the newly quarantined plants? If they found a local nursery selling plants on the quarantine list, they’d enforce the ban. But adding plants to the quarantine list doesn’t mean adding staff to the weed boards.
The truth is that most, probably all, weed boards are too small to make a significant dent in many of the invasive plants on their official lists. They try to educate the public, enlist our help, and tackle the worst and the earliest. The worst are the most harmful. The newly arrived include invasives whose population is still small enough to possibly eradicate. But weed boards are the Sisyphus of government agencies.
If we want to protect the trees in our local parks and forests from destruction by ivy, it’s still up to us. Pulling up ivy is a great way to build upper body strength. And if you round up some friends, you can make it a team sport. What we really need is a major league, with many teams and lots of events.
Jill Severn writes from her home in Olympia, where she grows vegetables, flowers, and a small flock of chickens. She loves conversation among gardeners. Start one by emailing her at jill@theJOLTnews.com.
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KarenM
Thank you for providing this information about quarantined plants. The ivy invasion is a big problem. This is one step in the right direction.
Your columns are always interesting.
Friday, July 25, 2025 Report this
JulesJames
Can my property become a practice field for your league of ivy-blackberry-holly pullers?
Saturday, July 26, 2025 Report this
HappyOlympian
Ivy weeps, but Wild Chervil might just displace everything, and anything that can stop it might be good to keep.
Saturday, July 26, 2025 Report this
DeaneTR
I like to tell people that Ivy is not much different than wrapping paper and if you want to enjoy the present you've been gifted (rich fertile life giving soil to grow things in) you have to unwrap the present.
Another way to look at is invasives are an indicator species of human neglect... If we cared more about what we were cultivating in the soil rather than what we were stripping down to bare ground with no replacement, we wouldn't have so many fertile places for invasives to thrive.
There's simply way too many people who dumbly think bare ground is normal and weeds won't come back once they use enough herbicide and weed cloth to put a stop to it. But from the earth's perspective bare ground is a wound that needs to be healed with whatever green living thing is able to heal it and because we've wiped out all the prettier more sensitive stands of naturalized vegetation, invasives are often all the planet has left to try to heal her many wounds before she bleeds out with salmon killing silt via erosion into our once crystal clear streams.
Saturday, July 26, 2025 Report this
sunshine39
Add my personal "favorite" wild clematis or Autumn Clematis. When it flowers, seeds drift to the neighbors.
Sunday, July 27, 2025 Report this
Regina Gallwas
Thank you Jill. Wonder why we can't target the most invasive of all the aforementioned plants put together: Scotch bloom? Gary
Monday, July 28, 2025 Report this
KinesthesiaAmnesia
I travel through Evergreen College Parkway NW and see ivy, Himilayan blackberry and Scotch broom. Any plans from the school or state to get rid of that? When I was a Greener my professors created assignments for pulling Scotch broom and other invasives on campus. We also did field trips to pull weeds at area parks and prairies. Hands-on learning!
Monday, July 28, 2025 Report this
EcoViking
Good article, Jill! I like your idea of a Native Plants League (the NPL) with local teams: the Westside Weedeaters, the Pacific Pullers, the South Capitol Captivators. Ivy is out of control where I live, where there is lots of second growth forest land. Several years ago I went to see the lighthouse on the north bank of the Columbia, just upstream of Ilwaco. The old second growth fir forest was an eerie ivy wasteland, all ivy green with no other living plant visible for at least a mile from the lighthouse. I imagine that some well-intentioned lighthouse keeper or Coast Guardsman with Northeastern roots planted a little around the early lighthouse, thinking that was the proper way for a lighthouse to look. Have a look for yourselves. An update would be helpful.
Thursday, July 31, 2025 Report this