15 Plants That Secretly Invite Snakes And Ticks (Remove These Immediately)

You walk through the same yard you have tended for 40 years. So does anyone who visits. Hold that picture. The plants you put in for beauty, the ones the nursery sold you in a four-inch pot, the ones the garden magazines told you would solve a shady corner, might be the same plants attracting ticks and the wildlife that brings ticks with them. Snakes hide where small mammals hide. Ticks ride small mammals into your yard. This is not theory. The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station published research showing one specific shrub, still sold at national chains across America, supports approximately 12 times more lime-infected ticks per acre than land without it. These are 15 plants you may already have. Number one is the shrub Connecticut studied. I had to dig three out of my own border two falls ago. It took three weekends. Stay with me. The reason any of this works is biology. Ticks do not appear out of nothing. Snakes do not move into a yard without a reason. Both follow the same chain. Ticks ride into your yard on small mammals, mice, chipmunks, voles, the occasional young rabbit. Those small mammals need three things to settle into a property. Dense ground level cover that hides them from hawks, moist soil that keeps them cool through summer heat, and a food source somewhere within 30 feet. Once the mammals settle, the ticks come with them. Snakes follow the mammals. A garden with a thriving population of mice is a garden where snakes will find dinner. A snake does not move into a yard for the plants themselves. The snake moves in because the plants created the conditions for the mice. What gardeners do not realize is that some of the most beautiful ornamentals, the plants the catalogs photographed in golden hour light, the ones that earned awards in the 1990s, the ones that became suburban standards, are the same plants that create exactly the conditions ticks and snakes look for. 15 of them are on this list. Number one has the most peer-reviewed research behind it. Number 15, boxwood hedges, Buxus sempervirens. Boxwood is the most planted ornamental hedge in American suburbs. Every formal foundation planting, every entrance walkway, every backyard parterre runs boxwood somewhere along the edge. The plant is evergreen, slow growing, and tolerates aggressive shearing. The branching habit is the issue. Boxwood foliage touches the ground from the day it is planted. Mature hedge plantings create an unbroken low canopy that small mammals settle into within two seasons. The soil underneath an old boxwood hedge stays dry and protected from weather for the entire year. Mice, voles, and the occasional chipmunk colonize established boxwood hedges and use the line of plantings as a covered travel corridor along the foundation of a house. Where small mammals travel along a foundation, ticks ride in with them and snakes follow the food trail. The plant itself is not aggressive. The problem is the structural growth habit and the rarely pruned interior. If you have boxwood, prune the lower foliage above ankle height so air moves underneath. The shearing breaks the mammal corridor. The hedge itself still looks intentional. If your boxwood plantings have not been pruned in a decade, this winter is a good time to take the lower foliage off. Number 14. Hostas. Hostas are the easiest plant to keep alive in a shady American yard. Every gardener over 60 has them. I have them. Most of us have too many of them. The large leaves create a problem nobody talks about. A mature hosta clump shades the ground completely. The soil underneath stays damp through July heat. Mice love hosta beds. Garter snakes love mice. The cycle starts in May and runs through October. Hostas themselves are not invasive and not the worst plant on this list. But if you have a dense planting of hostas spreading across a shaded slope under mature trees, you have created a small mammal sanctuary at ground level whether you meant to or not. The fix is not removing hostas. The fix is spacing them so airflow reaches the ground between clumps. Cut back the outer leaves in early September instead of waiting for first frost. Rake the leaf litter out of the bed in October before the ticks overwinter in it. A few hostas is fine. A solid carpet of hostas under a maple tree is the kind of bed where I would not let a five-year-old walk barefoot. Number 13 bittersweet vine, Selastris orbiculatus. Asian bittersweet is the orange fruited vine that lights up rural fences in October. People plant it for the fall color. The plant climbs everything within reach, drapes over hedges, swallows old apple trees, and creates dense thickets that small mammals colonize within two seasons. USDA Forest Service has the plant, also called oriental bittersweet, in official documents on the federal invasive species list across most of the eastern United States. Deer browse the leaves. Mice nest in the tangle at the base. Ticks ride in on both. The plant is also nearly impossible to remove. The roots spread aggressively several feet from the parent vine. Cutting the vine at the base only triggers re-sprouting from the root system within weeks. The professional removal method involves cardboard and 12 months of smothering, or cut and paint with herbicide on the cut stump. If you have Asian bittersweet, and a lot of older suburban properties do, often without the owner realizing what it is, start the removal process this fall. Native American bittersweet, Selastris scandens, is the alternative if you want the orange berries. It does not form thickets. Number 12. Wisteria, when overgrown, Wisteria sinensis. Chinese wisteria is the lavender cascading vine that turned every American front porch into a postcard in the 1950s. The plant is also one of the most aggressive structural climbers in the catalog. An untended wisteria becomes a dense tangle within five years. The tangle is the problem. Old wisteria on a pergola, overgrown and untrimmed for several seasons, creates an undisturbed micro-habitat that mice and chipmunks colonize. The wisteria itself is not the direct attractant. The dense protected mass it creates is. If you have a maintained wisteria, trimmed twice a year and pruned hard in late winter, you do not have a problem. If you have a wisteria that has grown over the side of an outbuilding or smothered an old swing set, that mass needs to come down. Native American wisteria, wisteria frutescens, is the substitute. It blooms half as dramatically, but does not become structural. Number 11, vinca periwinkle, vinca minor. Periwinkle was planted across American suburbs in the 1970s as the perfect shade ground cover. The plant covers the ground completely. It returns every spring without intervention. It blooms blue in April. The catalogs called it foolproof. Foolproof was correct. The plant cannot be controlled by ordinary means. A periwinkle bed creates a continuous mat across the ground that nothing else can colonize, and that mat is exactly the kind of cover small mammals settle into. Once vinca minor establishes itself roots from every node, the roots intertwine into a continuous fabric. Mice tunnel between the stems below the leaf layer. Ticks ride the mice in. A solid bed of vinca is something to remove. The professional method is cardboard plus six inches of wood chips for 12 months, the same method used to smother invasive ground covers across the country. After the smothering, replant with native ginger or wild strawberry. Number 10, pakisandra. Japanese pakisandra was the suburban shade ground cover of choice for 30 years. Every house built between 1950 and 1990 has a pakisandra bed somewhere on the property. I planted a 30-foot bed of it in my own first yard around 1985 before anyone in gardening circles was talking about what those mats do to small mammal populations underneath. None of us knew back then. We do now. The plant is dark green, evergreen, and grows in the deepest shade where nothing else does. It also creates exactly the continuous ground mat as vinca minor. Mice live in it. Chipmunks burrow under it. Ticks come in with both. Pakisandra is harder to identify as a problem because the leaves are larger and the bed looks neat from above. The action is underneath. Lift the leaf canopy in mid-July and the surface of the soil will be cool, dark, damp, and probably crisscrossed with mouse tunnels. The fix is the same as for vinca, smother and replace. Native plants for the same shade conditions include wild ginger, woodland phlox, or Pennsylvania sedge. Number nine, liriope and lily turf, liriope muscari. Liriope is the grass-like clumping plant edging suburban driveways across the southeast. The plant grows in tight rosettes about 18 inches tall, blooms purple in late summer, and survives drought once established. Garden centers sell it as a maintenance-free edging plant. The clumps are the issue. Each liriope clump is a small fortress at ground level. The dense base creates the cool, humid, sheltered conditions small non-venomous snakes look for during the heat of the day. The clumps also catch leaf litter and create humid pockets where ticks overwinter. Most gardens with a liriope border have at least one snake hiding spot they do not know about. The fix is not removing liriope entirely. It is keeping the clumps separated by at least 18 inches and raking the bed clear of leaf litter in October. A maintained liriope edge with airspace between clumps is acceptable. A solid block of liriope along a foundation wall is something to address. Number eight, English ivy. English ivy is the most aggressive evergreen ground cover sold at any garden center in America. The plant climbs everything within reach, smothers tree trunks, and forms thick mats across the ground that nothing else can penetrate. The leaves are dark green and waxy. The catalog's photographed it on stone walls in golden hour light for decades. Ivy is the worst ground cover on this list for tick and snake habitat. The dense canopy holds humidity through the entire summer. The mat below is colonized by mice within two years of establishment. Ivy climbing a mature tree trunk creates a vertical highway for mice into the canopy where they nest above ground. There is no light removal protocol for English ivy. The professional approach is a full removal. Pull the vines off trees, cut at the base, dig out the roots, and smother any regrowth for 12 months. This is a fall and winter project. Native creeping phlox and foam flower replace ivy in shade. Native bearberry replaces it in sun. I have been gardening 40 years. I have never been afraid of my own yard. The reason I made this list is that two summers ago my five-year-old granddaughter went out to look at the day lilies and came back with a tick on the back of her neck. We caught it. She was fine. The pediatrician removed the tick properly and the lab work came back clean. But I went out that evening and walked the property and saw what I had not been seeing. The pachysandra, the vinca, plants I had put in 20 years ago for low maintenance. They were doing exactly what plants do. They were growing. They had become something I did not plant. Drop your state in the comments. The next seven plants on this list are heavier than the first eight and the regional risk varies. Number seven. Mulberry trees with low branches. Morris species. Mulberry trees were planted across the rural American landscape for two centuries because the fruit feeds chickens, pigs and people. The tree is hardy. The fruit is genuine. The problem is what happens around an old mulberry in a yard. Birds eat the berries and roost in the lower branches. Mammals collect under the canopy for the fallen fruit. Deer come for both. By the second summer of an established mulberry near a residential property line, the area immediately around the trunk becomes a wildlife concentration point and ticks right in on every species. The tree itself is fine. The low branches are the problem. If you have a mature mulberry, prune the lowest branches to at least six feet off the ground. Rake the fallen fruit weekly through July and August. Both moves break the wildlife concentration without removing the tree. If you have a mulberry seedling that volunteered along a fence line and a lot of rural properties have these without realizing it, pull it now while the taproot is still manageable. Number six. Multiflora rose. Multiflora rose is the most common invasive rose in the eastern United States. The plant was introduced for erosion control and as a living fence. It does both jobs aggressively. An unmanaged multiflora rose hedge becomes a dense thorny thicket within four years. Deer use multiflora rose as bedding cover. Deer are the primary host for adult ticks across most of the country. A multiflora rose thicket on the back edge of a property is a deer hotel and where deer bed down, adult ticks lay eggs. The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station and several other state research programs have documented multiflora rose specifically as a tick amplifying habitat. The data is consistent. Removal is brutal. The thicket is thorny and the roots are deep. Heavy gloves, long sleeves, sharp loppers and patience. Cut everything to ground level then return every six weeks to cut the regrowth. By the second year the root system exhausts itself. Native pasture rose is the substitute if you want a wild rose look. Number five, honeysuckle invasive. Two species. Japanese honeysuckle is the climbing vine your grandmother might have grown over a porch railing. Amur honeysuckle is the shrubby fast-growing landscape plant that took over Midwest suburban yards in the 1980s. Both are documented invasive across most of the eastern United States. Both create dense undergrowth. Both leaf out earlier in spring than native shrubs and hold leaves later in fall which extends the protected season for the small mammals living underneath. Deer browse honeysuckle. Mice nest under it. Ticks come in with both. A hedge of Amur honeysuckle along a suburban property line is one of the most consistent tick amplification structures in American landscaping. The native alternative is northern bush honeysuckle, Deer Villa Lonicera. Native honeysuckle vines like coral honeysuckle, Lonicera sempervirens, substitute for Japanese honeysuckle on a trellis without becoming invasive. If you haven't established Amur honeysuckle hedge that is an autumn removal project. Cutting and applying herbicide to the cut stump is the only reliable method. Number four, Pampas grass, Cordyderia siluana. Pampas grass is the dramatic eight-foot tall ornamental grass with feathery white plumes that became a suburban status symbol in the 1980s. The plant is native to South America. The plant survives drought. The plant is also impossible to remove once mature. A mature Pampas grass clump can spread eight to ten feet across at the base in optimal conditions. The dense interior of the clump stays dark and protected from wind. Snakes shelter inside the dry leaf litter that accumulates at the base. Small mammals nest in the same dry mass. The plant itself does not attract ticks directly, but the mammal population it shelters carries ticks into the surrounding yard. If you have a young Pampas grass under three years old, dig it out this fall. If you have a mature clump, the professional removal involves cutting the entire plant back to 12 inches, soaking the crown in vinegar, and digging out the root mass over two seasons. Substitute with native big bluestem, Andropogon gerardi, or little bluestem, Schizochorium scoparium for the height and texture without the wildlife problem. Number three, ornamental grasses, Miscanthus sinensis, and similar. Miscanthus, called maiden grass, Japanese silvergrass, and eulalia, has been the most popular ornamental grass in American landscapes since the 1990s. The plant grows six to eight feet tall, blooms feathery plumes in September, and dies back to a dry standing mass that holds through winter. The dry standing mass is the issue. From October through April, an unbroken Miscanthus clump is a dry protected shelter at ground level. Mice nest in the clumps over winter. Snakes overwinter in the same protected base. By the time you cut the grass back in March, you have a small wildlife colony moving out into the rest of the yard. Miscanthus is also documented as invasive in several states, particularly along roadsides and disturbed areas where the seed spreads. The fix is cutting the grass back to 10 inches in November instead of waiting for spring. The cut breaks the winter shelter. The mice and snakes find somewhere else to settle. Spring growth comes back the same. Native big bluestem and little bluestem are the alternatives. Both are clump forming, native, and do not provide the same dense overwinter shelter. Number two, ground cover junipers. These are juniperus horizontalis varieties. Creeping juniper was planted across American suburbs as the rock garden and slope cover solution. The plant is hardy, evergreen, drought tolerant, and it forms dense mats across rocky ground where nothing else grows. Catalog sold it as the maintenance free landscape rescue plant. The dense mat is the entire problem. A mature creeping juniper bed is 12 to 18 inches deep at the surface with a dry, humid cavity underneath that small mammals colonize permanently. The needles on the surface catch leaf litter. The cavity below stays dry and protected through every weather event. Mice, chipmunks, voles, and the occasional snake all use established creeping juniper beds as habitat. Ticks come in with the mammals. The fix is not always removal. Maintained juniper beds kept thin, raked of leaf litter, and separated by airspace are acceptable. Overgrown solid juniper coverage is something to address. For full removal, the smother method works. Use cardboard, six inches of wood chips, and wait 12 months. Native bearberry replaces it in sun. Native creeping phlox works in part shade. Number one, Japanese barberry, Berberus thunbergii, the plant Connecticut studied. Japanese barberry is the dense thorny shrub with red foliage that became a suburban landscape staple in the 1980s. Catalog sold it as a maintenance free hedge plant. The plant survives drought, shade, deer browse, and pruning neglect. It was supposed to be the perfect ornamental. It is also the most documented tick amplifying plant in the United States. Researchers led by Dr. Scott Williams at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station published a 2009 study in the journal Environmental Entomology showing that forests with established Japanese barberry supported approximately 12 times more lime-infected black-legged ticks per acre than forests without the plant. The mechanism is direct. The dense thorny structure of mature barberry traps humidity near 80% at ground level, which protects ticks from desiccation and concentrates the white-footed mice that carry them. Japanese barberry is on invasive species lists across most New England and mid-Atlantic states, with outright sale bans now in place in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New York, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Wisconsin, and several others. A handful of truly sterile cultivars developed at the University of Connecticut have been exempted. National chains like Home Depot still sell seed-producing dwarf cultivars like Crimson Pygmy through their online catalogs in states where the species itself is banned. That is not a loophole gardeners need to use. I had three established Japanese barberries along the gate to my own perennial border. I planted them in 1997. After the Connecticut research came out and I read the actual paper, I dug all three out over two falls of weekends. The root systems were the worst removal of any shrub I have ever pulled. Every fragment re-grew the following spring. Two years later, no Japanese barberry on the property. Tick incidence dropped. My granddaughter walks the yard barefoot in July. The native substitute is winterberry holly, Ilex verticillata, with red fall berries. Deciduous and completely safe. Walk the yard this weekend. Look at each plant from the list. Pull what you can. You walk this yard every morning. So does anyone who visits. The yard deserves to be walked without ticks following anyone home. That is the only thing worth doing this weekend.