As a private and public lands manager over seeing 3000 acres of property in central Virginia, the amount of plants that escaped from cultivation into our natural areas is astonishing. You can find Japanese Honeysuckle in the most pristine remote places but still it is being sold by garden centers. There’s many other such as privet, shrub that was used as a “privy” back went out houses were thing that is dominating our forests. Bradford pear causes significance damage to private property once it reaches maturity for the wood  splits easily. A recent study shows correlations between garden centers that sell invasive plants and hotspots of invasive plant that stations are correlated. There’s over 3000 species of native plants in Virginia that we could be selling in marketing instead of these invasive ones that are adapted to our local environment and require less maintenance and have a lot more value to our local food webs. 

Additional species to consider:

autumn olive 

mimosa 

wisteria

ground ivy

vinca

english ivy