I love our woods. I do NOT love the poison ivy and invasive species. And because the poison ivy and invasive species will spread from the woods into my woodland and shade garden beds, once or twice a year I work on reducing their population. (Yes, although I love doing as much as I can myself in my garden, I know I can’t do everything!)

I am not using chemicals, I am using a team of highly skilled horticultural workers in this area. I use Umar Mycka, the poison ivy horticulturalist and his team. They come and work their magic, and remove what they dig out from our property so it’s gone, baby gone!

I will note for the record I am not compensated for writing about this, I am a really happy customer and a repeat customer on an annual basis.

A few years ago I was researching what you did to get rid of huge amounts of poison ivy. As I have said many times before when writing about my garden when we moved here it was a feral garden and unkempt woods. People don’t do this on purpose they get older, they can’t take care of a space, a house is for sale, and things don’t get done. Also, most people who have woods don’t know you have to take care of them, or they don’t know how to care for them properly.

Anyway, I stumbled upon what Umar Mycka does and gave him a call.

As much as I love to garden, I am really allergic to poison ivy. I am one of those people whose skin will bubble when in contact. And the amount of poison ivy and invasives in these woods was astounding and daunting . I wanted to also help our trees. That means removing the vines and things competing with them. That also means obliterating vines like bittersweet. That also means making sure garlic mustard doesn’t take over. It’s a pretty big list, and it’s a job that is well beyond my capabilities.

The crew was here for part one of their annual pull and remove fest on Friday. They had to stop early afternoon because of thunderstorms and also tornado warnings. That is climate change at work here where I live, because I don’t remember many tornado warnings growing up, and now we get them more often than we should. And what it means in these woods a lot of the time are straight line winds like the Derecho winds a couple of years ago which resulted in a new woodland planting bed because Mother Nature did a little cleaning out of one edge of the woods.

So Umar and his crew returned Saturday afternoon in the blistering heat and did an amazing job! They removed more poison ivy then I knew I still had, bittersweet, dog rose, tulip poplar saplings I didn’t want, garlic mustard, bishops weed/gout weed and more. I am truly grateful. They also take good care with my plantings, which is important to note.

I will have them back again for one more round this season and I just thought I would take the time to write about what they do because it’s amazing to me.

And I always learn from Umar who is quite the horticulturalist. And he makes me laugh. Because you can never say to him that you don’t think he will find the main root of something because then he always does!

And when Umar reads this post he will laugh because I found another patch of stuff. It’s impossible to get everything out of the woods at one time. Which is why I do this a couple of times a year. They do one side of the property one visit the other side of the property the next visit. It’s totally worth doing.

Contact info for Poison Ivy Horticulturist Inc:

5708 Overbrook Avenue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19131
267.968.5971 umar@getridofpi.com

Website: https://umarmycka.com/

They serve parts of Southeastern PA, NJ, and DE.

Happy gardening!