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We just bought a new house, with a somewhat overgrown front garden. Mostly I need to do some pruning and shaping.

They planted some ground cover, including ivy. Strangely, while the ground cover seems well established, there's still a lot of tall grass.

competing ground cover

I'm curious about the best way to get rid of the remaining grass.

Can I just wait for the ground cover to strangle the remaining grass?

Do I need a very thorough weeding?

Geoff Hutchison
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You need a very thorough weeding because unfortunately, your ground cover plants will not out compete the grass, more the other way around, except for the ivy, which in itself is difficult to control. If you find its impossible to extract the grass roots without damaging roots of plants you want to keep, its probably best to wait till Fall (whenever that is where you are), then dig up the plants as well, extract all the grass roots, keep the plants covered or sit them in containers with the roots in water at the bottom temporarily, dig the area over to remove any remaining grass and replant the plants. Water in well. Best completed in a day if possible.

If that sounds like too much work, then you can always try spraying the grass with a weedkiller like glyphosate, but you'd need to protect the other plants around it from the spray or it will kill those too. Some weedkillers that work on grass might be available in a paint on form - I've never found them very effective, but maybe you have a bigger range of this type of weedkiller where you are than we do here in the UK.

Bamboo
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    Bamboo is right. Hope that you see it would be far easier and more effective to completely scrape off all of the plant material, build up the plant bed with top soil to smother any vigorous plants and stop germination of seeds of which there will be plenty. You could pot some of these plants (use potting soil!). A ground cover should be ONE species to make a respectable, uniform mass. If there is a lawn, make a trench to divide plant bed and lawn. Mulch to smother weeds. Vigilant weeding is easier and more effective when weeds are babies. NO plastic or weed fabric! Send more pictures! – stormy Sep 08 '16 at 20:05
  • @stormy - This is what I inherited when we bought the house. The backyard is great, but I've got my hands full here in the front. There's too much ivy around to completely eliminate it, but I agree with vigorous weeding, removing the other varieties and smothering with mulch. I had just a small (vain) hope that I could avoid weeding all the grass. – Geoff Hutchison Sep 09 '16 at 14:42
  • I am the laziest gardener in the world. No way would I try weeding this! You'd be doing it forever and it would never do any justice to your landscape. Send a larger picture of what you've got going. Most of the time thinking one just needs to use 'elbow grease' is NOT the best thing to do for a landscape. Just sayin'!! – stormy Sep 10 '16 at 21:06
  • @stormy for real? I've done it loads of times over the years in different gardens, but while I was at this particular one, I'd get shot of the ivy too... start with a clean slate,then put the plants worth keeping back in plus some new, extra ones probably..it's the last time it'll need such drastic disturbance (well, if I did it myself...)! what would you do instead then? – Bamboo Sep 10 '16 at 22:06
  • Absolutely, I am with you! All that work pulling weeds when everything is kiddywampus, too many this and that! One time is all I'd want to do that kind of work to REDO. Pulling weeds is a given, a constant given. I have reached the wonderful point where I LOOK for weeds to pull as whatever I do creating a plant bed retards the weeds before they ever become a problem. No worry, for real, we are on the same dang page!! – stormy Sep 10 '16 at 22:45
  • @stormy - well I;m confused - in your previous comment you said no way you'd be weeding this...and 'elbow grease' was not the best thing for a landscape?! Which is why I asked what you'd suggest instead... – Bamboo Sep 10 '16 at 22:58
  • Whoa, sorry, Bamboo. I thought I said I'd start over again versus trying to fix that mess. Dig up and repot some of the best plants and then use a sod cutter to take up plant materials and an inch or so of soil. Turn it over and build up a plant bed. This one looks like it might be part of a larger planting and would be tough to build up without creating problems. I'd need to see a picture of the entire planting, beds, background, foreground (is there a lawn next to this bed?) This is where those lawn edge trenches come in handy. – stormy Sep 12 '16 at 19:50
  • This is funny. We ARE absolutely saying the same thing. It would take some work at the beginning but after that it should be easy peasy. I wish I knew that that mulch, human poo and sawdust completely decomposed was more available. It was my miracle worker! Improved soils quickly, easy to dump right on weeds and the weeding is done. Weeds that come in on the wind or the few that make it to the surface are easy to pull. It also fertilized and increased the organisms in the soil. I am so spoiled! – stormy Sep 12 '16 at 19:56
  • Oh I see - you mean sort it out properly how I suggested, then don't muck about with it anymore afterwards... gettit now – Bamboo Sep 12 '16 at 20:16