Joe Pye weed

A heads-up. To stabilize a slope with plants that wouldn't require much attention, we planted prairie natives and some native milkweed. It turns out that Joe Pye weed spreads easily, grows quite tall, and overtops things like the monarch-bait milkweed. Fortunately it's easy to pull, but we hoped for a little less maintenance than that. And getting it out of the roses is going to be fun. And it turns out that the fall die-back means a lot of stalks to clear out--so much for trivial maintenance.

I guess there are no shortcuts and no plant-and-forget plans.