Privet - Fencerow Menace or Easy Ornamental?

The truth is that many privets are well-mannered garden subjects, flowering prettily, making great background plants, offering us trouble-free leaf colors, and generally getting on well with everyone else in the garden. We must learn who to invite over and who to have the bouncer throw out. All privets are generally similar in appearance, and it takes a little knowledge and experience to identify them accurately.

The Japanese privet is top of the good guys. It is a small, attractive, and hardy tree, so it is a great choice for a problematic area. Equally useful is the California privet, which will never exceed 15 feet in height. It ignores drought and heat and is easily trimmed into a hedge. The honey-scented blossoms attract butterflies and bees.
Privets are members of the lilac family and are closely related to them. Their fragrance is hard to describe; some people like it but are generally in the minority. A well-tended privet makes a handsome plant in the garden.

There are two species of privet that we can easily garden without. European privet, also called common privet, is the main bad guy. This plant will grow rapidly, crowd out your garden, and produce some dull flowers that seed profusely. Chinese privet is most common in the South. This plant is not particularly cold-hardy, but it thrives in the warmth and humidity of the southeast, seeding and spreading into natural forests and crowding out native species. Privet is a successful invasive species due to its adaptability and competitiveness, displacing native vegetation.

Privet is one of the most problematic invasive plant species in Arkansas. It escapes into forests and dominates the understory, eliminating native plants and making forestry more expensive for landowners. Treatments for plant removal and control are under investigation for effectiveness.

All parts of a privet plant are poisonous to humans and most animals and mildly toxic to grazing livestock. Toxicity is due to the presence of terpenoid glycosides. Symptoms from eating privet fruit or leaves include nausea, headache, abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, weakness, low blood pressure, and low body temperature.