Growing plants next to houses

Good morning everyone, I'm new to this forum and have a rather general request for some advice please:
We have a fairly modern traditional brick built house in Scotland, and have a number of vigorous climbers growing close around it and up it's walls - these include; summer and winter jasmine, wisteria (not flowered yet!), ornamental japonica, climbing Hydrangea and honeysuckle.

Can anyone give any authoritative advice on whether we need to have any concerns about the roots of these plants doing any damage to the house foundations? We can easily manage these plants above ground but it's what might be happening below ground which is a slight concern! I'm aware of the need to be careful with tree planting of course, but what about these woody climbers?

Many thanks in anticipation,

IanF.

 

Hi Ian, and welcome to the forum.

I don't have any direct knowledge, but can only make assumptions from what I know about plants. I suspect that there isn't much danger. I can see three types of problem. Physical damage from a tree falling on the house, physical damage by roots and subsidance caused by water extraction.

Trees are clearly the big problem as they can cause all three types of damage. Wisteria can have very big and powerful roots, but it seems to be quite acceptable. I was bought up in a house with Wisteria growing up it and there was no suggestion of any damage. And its seen on a lot of buildings, old colleges etc. By comparison I would think the other plants you mention are less of a problem.

 

Hi Ian, I used to have a climbing Hydrangea growing up the back wall of my house,
it didn't do any serious damage but I had to remove the smaller branches from the
brickwork with a wallpaper scraper, it was a devil of a job to get it off and has marked
the wall permanantly, I've since had a large conservatory built and the interior has been
plastered hiding the worst of the marks. the Hydrangea looked beautiful in full flower but
they do make a mess if you want to remove them.

Pete

 

Does your surface water (i.e. rain water) drain to soakaways? If it does, beware. Big shrubs have powerful roots and will go looking for the source of such water and will eventually clog up your soakaways.

I had to dig out the roots of a large escallonia hedge from my one of my soakaways at my last house not once, but twice!

 

Good evening Ian and welcome to the site. Just to be pedantic, the Jasmines aren`t climbers, they are large,straggly subshrubs, more commonly refered to as wall shrubs.:gnthb::hehe: