The war on Japanese knotweed

Once hailed as a 'handsome' import, this most rampant of plants has come to be seen as a sinister, ruinous enemy. Can it be stopped?When Paul Ryb found himself a new home, in 2014, no one told him about the danger lurking in the garden. The flat, in the north London neighbourhood of Highgate, occupied the ground floor of a two-storey, brown-brick building. It had two bedrooms and a modest extension, but its truly splendid feature was a big, corner-plot garden. Ryb, a former investment banker, bought the flat for almost ?1.3m and moved in mid-autumn 2014. His eyesight is severely impaired, so even more than most homebuyers, he had trusted his surveyor's report, which testified to the "excellent condition" and "very few defects" of the house. The next spring, though, when planting season began, his gardener took one look at the garden and gave him the bad news. He'd found three clumps of Japanese knotweed out there, which portended ruin for the garden. Refusing even to touch them, the gardener packed up his tools and left.Knotweed spreads slowly but adamantly, and it can take over a patch of land until no other plants survive. Given time, the three stands of knotweed may have consumed Ryb's garden, so he had little choice but to hire workmen who dug out and carted away the knotweed and the soil beneath, at a cost of more than ?10,000. Then he sued his surveyor. In 2019, a court awarded Ryb ?50,000 in damages, citing not just the expense he had borne, but also his investment in the house and knotweed's aesthetic interference with his "ability fully to use and enjoy the land". Continue reading...