Ivy Problem Before and After & Neighbor Issues Follow-Up

You all may remember I recently shared a post about our yard and the ivy problems we have. I also sat down with Dr. Therese Mascardo of Exploring Therapy to discuss common neighbor issues and she gave some great advice on how to resolve them. (Check out that post which includes a video of our conversation here to be brought up to speed.) Today I wanted to share a follow-up with you!

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Troy-Bilt. All opinions are my own.

First of all, big thanks to Troy-Bilt for facilitating the conversation between Dr. Therese and me. She had some really great tips on how to deal with common problems like dogs barking at all hours, people mowing lawns at the crack of dawn, and then our specific issue of ivy rooted in a neighbor’s yard and spilling into ours. Now, first of all let me just say we are guilty too. There was some ivy in our yard pouring into another neighbor’s yard so we’ve been working on that. We finished phase one of ivy removal which was the back corner of our yard. It was by far the most severe problem area. (We plan on doing the rest of the yard later as it’s a multiple phase undertaking.) Here’s what it looked like before.

And here it is now.

That fence was completely covered with ivy before! It’s so nice to actually see it now.

There’s still plenty of work to be done but we made a lot of progress. First, we cleared the ivy by hand and with a machete and a rake.

Then, we used this awesome chipper shredder from Troy-Bilt to turn sticks and twigs into wood chips for some ground coverage.

This thing is awesome! It’s easy to operate and does the job quickly. While we couldn’t round up enough wood to cover the entire area, we covered as much as we could and then added a top layer of pine straw. We are hoping these layers will help suppress the ivy growth. Plus, it looks a lot better than just a bunch of dirt! There isn’t enough sun to grow grass back in this corner so this was our solution.

Now, as for the neighbors, funny story! I had planned to introduce ourselves and form an initial relationship with them so we could discuss the ivy at a later time. Well, in the meantime, they started addressing it themselves without us even saying anything! (Maybe they saw my blog post? Hmmm. Haha) Anyway, with Covid it’s been difficult to interact with any neighbors and I haven’t seen many people out and about, so when things improve a bit I do still plan on connecting with them just so if any future issues arise, we will already have built a rapport.

As for the other area of the yard where ivy is spilling in from church property, we decided not to bother addressing it with the church because there’s just so much ground covered on their side of the fence and it’s such a large area that it probably isn’t feasible for them to keep it maintained. It’s basically the woods. So we’ve just dealt with our side of the fence and will do our best to maintain it so it doesn’t keep spreading into our yard.

I can’t say enough good things about Dr. Therese and her advice. Be sure to connect with her on Instagram if you haven’t already. And if you’re tackling any yard projects anytime soon, be sure to check out all of the awesome equipment Troy-Bilt offers.

Thanks for visiting!

-Erin