How to get rid of creeping charlie (ground ivy)

If you've got a low, sprawling weed with round scalloped leaves creeping across a shady, damp corner of your lawn — and it smells faintly minty when you mow it — you're almost certainly dealing with creeping charlie. It's one of the most stubborn weeds in North American lawns, but it's beatable once you understand how it grows and pick the right moment to strike. This guide walks you through spotting it, killing it properly, and fixing the conditions that let it move in.

What creeping charlie actually is

Creeping charlie (also called ground ivy, or Glechoma hederacea if you want to sound clever at the garden centre) is a perennial member of the mint family. That mint heritage is the reason it's such a nightmare — it spreads aggressively, roots wherever it touches soil, and comes back year after year from the same root system.

How to identify it

Getting the ID right matters, because a few weeds look similar from a distance. Here's what to look for:

• Scalloped, round leaves — kidney- or fan-shaped with soft rounded teeth along the edges, growing in opposite pairs.
• Square stems — roll a stem between your fingers and you'll feel four distinct sides. That's a dead giveaway for the mint family.
• A minty smell — crush a leaf or mow over a patch and you'll catch a pungent, slightly herbal scent.
• Small purple flowers in spring — little funnel-shaped blue-violet blooms appear in mid to late spring.
• Low, creeping growth — it hugs the ground and rarely stands more than a few centimetres tall.

Where it likes to live

Creeping charlie thrives exactly where your grass struggles: shade, damp soil, and thin turf. If it's colonising the north side of the house, under a tree, or a soggy patch near a downspout, that's not a coincidence. Those conditions are the weed's whole strategy.

The key insight: Creeping charlie spreads by stolons — creeping stems that root at every node where they touch the ground. Snap off the top and each rooted node can regrow. This is why casual pulling or a single spray so often fails: you have to hit the whole connected network, not just the leaves you can see.

Why it's so hard to kill

The rooting-at-every-node habit means one plant can become a dense mat of dozens of independent, rooted crowns in a single season. Miss a few nodes and it rebounds. On top of that, it's a perennial, so it stores energy in its roots and rides out the winter ready to spread again.

The waxy leaf surface also sheds a lot of contact spray, which is why timing and the right active ingredient matter so much.

How to get rid of it

Best time: autumn

If you take one thing from this article, make it this. Autumn is by far the best time to treat creeping charlie. As the weather cools, the plant pulls energy and sugars down into its roots for winter — and a systemic herbicide gets carried down with that flow, straight to the roots you can't reach by hand. A spring or summer spray kills the top growth but often leaves the roots alive.

Choose the right herbicide

Not all broadleaf weedkillers are equal on this weed. Here's how the common active ingredients stack up:

The takeaway: look for triclopyr or dicamba on the label. A product built around 2,4-D on its own will disappoint you. When you spray:

• Follow the label rate exactly — more is not better, and overdosing can stress your grass.
• Spray on a calm, mild day — ideally above roughly 10°C, with no rain forecast for 24 hours so it has time to absorb.
• Expect to repeat — a follow-up treatment a few weeks later, or again the next autumn, is normal for a mature patch.
• Mind the edges — these herbicides harm garden beds, vegetables, and trees, so keep spray off anything broadleaved you want to keep.

Hand-pulling small patches

For a small, young infestation, you can skip the chemicals. Water the area first so the soil is soft, then loosen with a fork and lift the mat slowly, teasing out as much of the stolon-and-root network as you can. Get every rooted node you can find — anything left behind will restart the colony. This works best on a manageable patch you catch early; it's a losing battle on an established lawn-wide mat.

The real long game: fix the conditions

Here's the part most people skip, and it's why creeping charlie keeps coming back. The weed moved in because your lawn gave it an opening. Kill it without closing that gap and something — probably more ground ivy — will fill the space again.

• Let in more light — thin out or lift overhanging branches to bring sunlight to shaded areas. Grass that gets more sun competes far better.
• Improve drainage — deal with soggy spots by aerating compacted soil, redirecting downspouts, or top-dressing low-lying areas.
• Thicken your turf — overseed bare and thin patches, mow at the higher end of your grass's range, and feed with a balanced fertiliser so a dense sward crowds weeds out.
• In deep shade, be realistic — some corners will never grow lush grass. A shade-tolerant seed mix, ground cover, or mulch may be a smarter long-term answer than fighting the same battle every year.

Skip the borax myth

You'll find countless online recipes for killing creeping charlie with borax (a boron-based laundry product). Don't. The results are wildly inconsistent, and it's easy to build up boron in the soil to levels that damage your grass and linger for a long time — creating a bare patch that's an open invitation for more weeds. Stick with a proper herbicide or hand-pulling.

Frequently asked questions

Will creeping charlie kill my grass?

Not directly, but it will outcompete thin or shaded turf and smother it over time. It's opportunistic — the weaker your lawn, the faster it takes over.

Does mowing get rid of creeping charlie?

No. Mowing just chops the top growth and can even help it spread, since severed rooted nodes carry on growing. You need to target the roots, not the leaves.

What kills creeping charlie but not grass?

A selective broadleaf herbicide containing triclopyr or dicamba. These target broadleaved weeds while leaving your grass unharmed when used at the label rate — unlike a total weedkiller such as glyphosate, which kills everything.

How long does it take to kill creeping charlie?

You'll see leaves yellowing and curling within a couple of weeks, but full control of an established patch usually takes a follow-up treatment and often a second autumn. Patience and timing beat brute force here.

How Lawnova takes the guesswork out of it

Creeping charlie is really a symptom — of shade, damp, and thin turf — so beating it for good means treating your specific lawn, not a generic checklist. Lawnova builds you a personalised plan based on your grass type, climate, and problem areas: it tells you exactly when to treat, what to look for, and how to thicken your turf so the weed can't come back. No more guessing at timings or products.

Get your free Lawnova plan

Beat the ivy, keep the lawn — we'll walk you through every step.