Wrong approach. Stop fighting and learn to manage your permanent garden guest. Create the proper environment for your desired plants while keeping the bishop weed underground (in other words smother it) It will always be there, but you can limit its access to your yard and the sunlight it must have to grow above ground.

The Globe would have done us gardeners a better service by providing a real photo of this noxious weed instead of the prettified, negative image. If we could see the real thing, perhaps we could get a head start on keeping it out of our own gardens.

Though raised in MA, I now live in Florida. Bishop's weed sounds remarkably like dollar weed, which thrives here and which will end up living long after I am not!

We bought a house from a man who was very fond of ground covers. One of them turned out to be bishop's or gout weed and it is indeed everything that the author describes. There are many pictures of it available in an on line search, for those who are unsure of it's appearance. I have been told by gardeners more expert than I that there are three plants that will contain gout weed. One is the common mayapple, another is hellebore or lenten rose and the third is hay scented fern (although I regard the last as a pest in and of itself). I have planted the first two along the edge of the gout weed in my garden in the hopes that this will serve to contain the spread.

I feel your pain.The more I pull up the more they come back.

We have a similar weed. All we can do is grab them as best we can in early spring and that helps. You'll never get rid of them completely, but they'll stay-in-tow if you get to them early. Bit my guess is that you've already figured that out! Happy gardening. Jeff Boston