Are there any issues with vines on houses?

ftsos

Hello Everyone,

I live in the city in a very built up area. I love plants and stuff or any greenery. I have these vines on my house. Please see picture below. I love them and let them grow. I trim them from time to time.

https://snag.gy/GFy6WD.jpg

However, I am wondering if there is any potential issues with having vines on houses. Could it cause my house any damage in any way? Are there risks?

If you have knowledge in this area, your advice would be appreciated.

Thank you.

Ryan

Farway

That is not a vine, it's ivy

Depends on the basic structure of your house, the aerial roots can penetrate weak mortar but apart from that a wildlife & environmentally friendly plant

ftsos

@Faraway, firstly thank you for clarifying. I am clueless when it comes to greenery. All I know is I like having plants and trees around. When I say I live in a very built up area, I am not exaggerating. We have a garden, and my wife grows enough food there for us to eat now and then from it.

Anyway, its Ivy you say. We have one of those 1950/60's cube shapes houses. A perfect square. Not the prettiest house to look at, but its very spacious for a city house. I feel this plant/ivy plant makes it look nice.

The house structure is good. There are no cracks. But I will keep an eye out. I think I will need to keep an eye on structure to see if it penetrates any areas. We trim it from time to time.

The one thing I have noticed is a lot more insects. I am hoping to let it grow so that it covers all of the outside wall!

Thanks for your advice.

Farway

ftsos wrote: »

The one thing I have noticed is a lot more insects. I am hoping to let it grow so that it covers all of the outside wall!

Thanks for your advice.

Insects love ivy, loads of nooks & crannies to hide and overwinter in. Insects bring birds, I had a wren nesting in mine


If you let it flower, usually early spring, you'll find the early bumble bees just adore the flowers for early nectar


Just watch it doesn't creep into your loft space under the eaves

ftsos

in the last month or two I have seen it grow at a rapid pace. Although I have a house and not a flat, luckily or unluckily it doesn’t have a lot. The house is a cube with a flat roof. There were some houses/cottages made in London in the 60s designed a bit different.

Thank you.

Primrose

Yes this is ivy. When you mentioned vines I thought pwehqps yiu were referring to grape vines which are often trained up fences or walls of houses.

Ivy can be a mixed blessing because it can cling ferociously to the fabric of buildings and if the fabric//cement/brickwork is ,t in good condition it can weaken it considerably.

It can look very attractive and of course is environmentally friendly to insects, especially bees who like the flowers in the autumn and birds who will nest in it once the ivy branches become stronger but you will need to keep a very close check on your house structure and prune it back regularly. Bear in mind that this task could get easily out of hand once the growth reaches bedroom window height or you become older and can,t climb ladders.

Also,once any ivy clinging bits have been pulled away from the stonework they will leave permanent damage marks on it which could end up looking very unsightly

I personally wouldn,t risk it as we,ve had fences completely wrecked by it. However if you want some greenery to cover your structure. Grape vines might be a better bet. You can have some sturdy wires installed into your and the leaves will trail along these rather than damaging your brickwork The shoots grow quickly in spring and once established, if yiu get the right grape, will have edible fruit in the autumn.

Or alternatively perhaps some wisteria which is pretty too?

ftsos

Thanks for your reply.

We already have grape vines, and we grow grapes, enough to eat from and give some to friends and neighbours. The grapes vines we have are in the garden and have a structure of their own, fence like cube. Although I am not the gardener in the house, my wife grows many fruit and veg in the garden, even though we don't have a huge garden (relatively speaking). We have cherries as well as a few strawberries and a lot of veg. Nothing in volume. I think she freezes what we don't finish so we can finish the rest throughout the year. I think she likes the thought of growing it and eating it. In years gone by I used discourage her for spending so much time on it. Now I no longer do, I think it relaxes her or something.

I know you are right about the Ivy maintenance. It has already reached above the first floor windows. I agree it will be a lot of maintenance. I have had to rip the Ivy off from sections of the building, and it leaves an ugly mark, I agree. Having said that, if you saw all the concrete in the area I live, you'll want it even with the negatives.

A few years ago I was thinking of spending some money on the outside of the house, like stoning or something (wasn't sure what I was going to do), mainly for cosmetic reasons because although it is a nice house, apart from being unusual shape it wasn't very pretty from the outside. Then the Ivy started growing, and after a while I noticed how much of a difference it made to the look of the house, way better than any stoning or paint would have done. As it has now grown a lot, it looks nice in my opinion.

I think you have both educated me on the pro's and con's. So I will see how I feel at the end of this summer.

Thank you to both of you.

peter_the_piper

Bewary of ivy. We have one on the wall of our extension, I have to prune it once or twice a year to stop it getting into the loft, pulling the gutters down and forcing its way into the wall via the pvc windows.

Grenage

Generally if the wall is sound then climbers aren't a problem - until they reach the eaves. Unless you can easily get up top and keep it from spreading into the gutters and across the roof, I wouldn't have it.

Primrose

I sympathise with your dilemma between wanting to improve the appearance of the house if its very dreary in its bareness and the growing problem of maintenance. I don't know what age you are and how physically capable you are of the regular maintenqnce this large area of growth will need in the future .

All I will say from experience is that having something of this area which suddenly grows beyond maintenance (and established ivy is capable of growing very quickly) is something to be connaidered seriously. Getting somebody in from outside to prune it will be very expensive. Also if you ever have to sell the house, many possible buyers might be putoff by the potential structural problem it might have caused, or the cost of keeping it maintained and under control.

If you really like it, why not compromise and keep its growth maintained at no higher than the ground floor wiNdows where at least it remains manageable?

Diana2014

The trouble with ivy (and Virginia creeper) is that it sticks to the wall using tiny suckers, which is why it leaves such a mess when ripped off the wall. You can minimise the mess by cutting the stems and leaving the upper parts of the plant to die back naturally; when dried out, they don't adhere to the wall nearly as effectively.

I wouldn't grow either plant on old brickwork, especially houses built with soft traditional lime mortar, which it will invade mercilessly. On ugly modern bricks which are cemented together, or on a concrete building, however, it shouldn't do too much damage.

Best to grow it over ugly structures eg fletton walls (low front garden walls, shed etc) and dilapidated old (or modern lapped panel) fences, which it disguises very well. It'll always need to be kept in check a bit but I mostly do that by pruning back the long stems of the last year's growth to make wreaths at Christmas. (No need for wreath frames; just wind the stems gently into a circle and then twine them around each other until the structure is stable and attractively dense with foliage.)