As Halloween creeps around once again, many people like to turn their unique homes into fun and festive places to brighten up the long and increasingly dark evenings and nights.

Pumpkins, ghoulish figurines and other such Halloween decorations can certainly add seasonal touches and are great for the little ones, as well as more grown-up folk attending dinners and parties. Scaring up an autumnal atmosphere inside is one thing, but what if you have a real and terrifying situation outside — lurking right there in your beloved garden?

Anyone who has ever discovered the terror of Japanese knotweed springing up all over their garden knows the real fear we’re talking about. Once this highly invasive plant takes root on a property, its tendril-like roots shoot down and out in all directions. It’s almost impossible to deal with yourself, growing like a blazing wildfire.

Spooktacular Growth

There’s no doubt at all that Japanese knotweed is the scariest thing in any garden and the most frightening plant for any gardener — amateur or professional — to try and eradicate. Just how did we end up with this horrific import?

It was brought into the UK way back in the 1840s as a pretty ornamental plant that people at the time were fond of. Soon enough, though, they grew wary of its voracious and creepy appetite for rapid growth (it can expand by up to 20cm a day in peak growing season) and they discarded their plants. Out in the wild, Japanese knotweed really got growing and became a true monster nightmare.

But there’s no need to turn into a modern-day zombie over frustrating and gory efforts to get rid of Japanese knotweed on your own. The problem, one that haunts many a gardener with the plant ravaging their garden, is the extensive root system. Just slashing back the plant and hoping it will die off won’t work: it will quickly come back to life as the roots send up new shoots — the very sight of which can look like a bloodcurdling apparition.

RIP, Japanese Knotweed!

To really kill off spooky Japanese knotweed that’s threatening to overtake a home and even cause structural damage to it, you need Japanese knotweed removal specialists to tackle the alien problem. They will quickly deploy a range of ghostbusting methods to ensure the Japanese knotweed is properly exorcised from your garden. It can be murder trying to attempt this yourself — and all you really would be doing is digging your own grave.

A top Japanese knotweed removal firm will appraise individual circumstances and decide, in consultation with the property owner, what the best course of action is. This can be a herbicidal treatment that is relatively low-cost but takes some time. Or, it might be a full-on dig-out of the entire root system — the equivalent of the Grim Reaper taking a deadly scythe to the creepy pest. A five-year or ten-year guarantee that you won’t be haunted by Japanese knotweed any more will certainly help to put your mind at rest.

This Halloween, don’t be terrorised by Japanese knotweed. Shake off the gardening cobwebs by calling in the Japanese knotweed removal experts and consign this raging psychopath of a plant to the cemetery for eternity.