It’s been a busy and memorable year here at Environet and as Christmas approaches, we look back on an exciting twelve months which saw us help more customers than ever before tackle their invasive plant problems. 

The Japanese knotweed growing season has drawn to a close and the plant’s above-ground growth has now mostly died back. But despite looking dead, knotweed will be replenished with new energy reserves from the summer growth which are drawn down and stored in its powerful underground rhizome system, ready to re-emerge stronger next spring.

A couple buying a home in Saffron Walden, Essex, were faced with a ‘jungle’ of bamboo which had run riot in the front garden of the 3-bedroom detached house they viewed in April this year. 

Katherine Beckford and her partner Oliver Jones were surprised at the extent of a bamboo infestation which had spread from the border hedge, where it had been planted to provide privacy from the street, to form a dense mass of rhizome covering the front garden, destroying the side fence to encroach onto the neighbour’s driveway and growing several metres in height.