4/6/2012 2:04 PM
About 8 years back I had a Club President that wanted to plant areas around our lakebanks to make them look better (not plain). To be honest it ended up being a maintenance nightmare for us. the thought of not having to deal with weedeating the lakebanks since they are planted was bogus. we still had to weedeat around the plants and worse of all we had all types of weeds growing inside of the iris's that were planted. We tried several types of herbicides that were labled for spraying over the plants but they were generally not strong enough to kill the weeds (some of the weeds was torpedo grass). I eventually just cut them down. Since I used iris's they come back every spring and I will leave them be until after the bloom and then cut them back down. In my opinion, the banks look better without the plantings. But then again I have a very small crew and not much budget or time to deal with them.
I would be interested in seeing if anyone has a better way of managing them since they still return every year.