Get rid of ginger

While some types of ginger can look nice in your garden you’ll regret having any of the ‘wild’ gingers. Yellow ginger and kahili ginger were both introduced as garden plants but they quickly form dense and impenetrable mats of rhizomes which smother anything else. In the wild these can grow to a metre deep and a hectare in area. All the underground parts can grow from fragments, while kahili ginger also has seeds which are spread by birds. As they are tolerant of shade they then invade our native forests.

The kahili ginger flowers from February to April and has perfumed lemon-yellow flowers with conspicuous red stamens. Red seeds then appear in the winter months. Yellow ginger flowers appear May to June and are cream to light yellow in colour.

Wild ginger can be controlled by cutting it down and painting stumps with herbicide. Small plants can be dug up but do not compost the rhizomes.

For more specific advice see the weedbusters website.