A new homeowner is stressed with their property just a few months after getting the keys after discovering a “disaster” growing beneath their floorboards.
Moving home is one of the most stressful experiences a person can go through. When it comes to buying a home, these negative experiences can be exacerbated further by the seemingly never ending admin work, daunting surveys, logistical challenges and more.
One couple thought they’d lucked out by snapping up their dream home a few months ago; a 1904 Edwardian property. They paid for a survey and it was noted that a little plant was growing out of the skirting board in front of the bay window.
They “didn’t think too much of it and thought it managed to seed itself in the slightly loose skirting” but quickly realised “how wrong” they were. In the Reddit forum Gardening UK, they created a post titled “my Mahonia nightmare – unwanted indoor plant – how to eradicate?”
They explained: “In the front garden/drive, there are quite a few Mahonia plants (Oregon Grape, according to the PictureThis app). Very early on, we removed one nearest the house, but we uncovered the true disaster hiding under our floorboards.
“Upon taking the radiator off, we knew something was seriously wrong. After lifting the flooring and floorboards, we uncovered the disaster. Turning to my trusty PictureThis app again, it said we had Swamp Horsetail! Upon much googling, I was truly scared as it is a nightmare to get rid of.”
The couple have explored their home and discovered “the stems have found their way through the air gaps between the bricks” which means they “don’t have access to it”. After “chipping off some of the rendered plinth at the front of the house”, they were able to find the entry point and found “a bright yellow blob with a stem of the same type of the spaghetti inside that was thankfully misidentified as horsetails.”
They turned to Reddit looking for advice on how to get rid of the unwanted plant. They’ve put their flooring back down after removing as many of the stems as possible and are hoping to avoid lifting them again “until necessary”.
They added: “At some point, we’re going to insulate the joists and renovate the room at which point we can confirm [the plant] is dead, so we can only access the root/stem from outside, as the main plant has been removed. Do I have to do anything else, or should I use some type of poison? I understand they self-seed, so we will make sure to remove any seedlings.”
Fellow gardening and horticulture enthusiasts were keen to share their thoughts. Many stressed the importance of weed killer and getting rid of any roots but someone else raised a concern about the brickwork: “The plant has managed to get into the house via loose brickwork in the wall, if that was secure it wouldn’t have rooted there. If I’m understanding the image correctly the root is not that big, it obvs had shoots growing in the dark under floor boards, the root in the wall looks relatively small.
“Next steps would be to contact a builder to assess the wall and how it got in in the first place, and apply some root kill product, I’m not up on what specifically to use.”
