Invasive plants are a serious ecological concern. Without natural predators, they push out native plants and the wildlife that depend on them. In Connecticut, there are more than 100 identified invasive plants. Members of UConn Extension’s Sustainable Landscape Program began the development of an invasive plant certificate program in 2024. In early 2026, the College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources began offering a new online certificate program that educates residents how to identify and manage invasive plants in the state. Our guest today is Lauren Kurtz, the newest member of the Home and Garden Education Center, who talks about the dangers of invasive plants and what can be done to deal with them. The course will be offered again next winter.
Listen to Episode 166 on Podbean
Mike: Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the UConn 360 Podcast. It’s Mike Enright from University Communications, along with Izzy Harris from University Communications. Izzy, happy summer.
Izzy: Thanks. I forgot about that.
Mike: It officially began last weekend, I guess. So today we’re talking about invasive plants and species, and our guest is Lauren Kurtz. She’s a research associate in the Home Garden Education Office, College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources, CAHNR, as we call it here at UConn. She’s the newest member of that group. A proud UConn graduate, with a master’s and doctorate degree from the Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture.
Her research focuses on the breeding and horticulture of hemp. As a science communicator and educator, she specializes in ecological horticulture and invasive plant management, and that’s what we’re talking about today. The UConn Extension Sustainable Landscape Program began the development of an invasive plant certificate program in 2024, and in 2026, the Sustainable Landscape Program of the UConn Extension began offering a new online certificate program that educates residents on how to identify and manage invasive plants in our state, which is a big problem for some people, and it’s a big problem just in general.
So, Lauren, welcome to the podcast, and let’s talk about invasive species and plants.
Lauren: Yes, thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Mike: So, before we talk about it a little bit, give us a little bit about your background and how you gained an interest in this area.
Lauren: Yep. I grew up in Illinois. I went to college in Michigan, and my undergrad degree was in environmental studies and geography. I always knew I wanted to work with plants and animals. My degrees were sort of vague, and I didn’t really know exactly where I was going to go after that, but my first job after college was as an environmental educator in Colorado at a national wildlife refuge, and I was working on monarch butterfly conservation.
So, I got really into native plants and how certain insects need native plants to complete their life cycle, and that’s really how I got into horticulture. I knew I needed to go to grad school if I wanted to get further in my career, so my partner and I moved to Connecticut because he’s from here.
So, we moved back to Connecticut, and then I applied to grad school at UConn, and I worked with Dr. Jessica Lebel-Brand in the Plant Science Department. And in grad school, my research focused on hemp breeding and hemp horticulture, but I made a pivot after I graduated to now be working with invasive plants and ecological landscaping.
Izzy: So, speaking of invasive plants, for those who don’t know, can you talk a little bit about what they are? Why are they concerning? How long have they been around? And, you know, I feel like it’s kind of a hot topic lately. Why now?
Lauren: It is a hot topic lately, and I’m happy to be part of it while it’s becoming more mainstream. They have been around for a long time. So first I’ll start with what an invasive plant is. It gets sort of confusing. Some people have some trouble knowing what they are because it’s different in every state.
Invasive plants in Connecticut are regulated by statute, and there is an official list of over 100 plants that are considered invasive. There are nine criteria that a plant needs to meet to be considered invasive, but basically, they’re non-native. They have escaped cultivation and become naturalized in the state and in natural areas.
So, they’re not native, they’re established in natural areas, and they’re problematic. So, they displace native plants, and they can cause economic damage for managing them, and they’re also just damaging to the environment generally. They don’t provide habitat for native species, and they really out-compete those native species and don’t provide the ecosystem functions that native species do.
And I think we’re hearing a lot more about it lately because people are becoming more aware to the fact that our birds are declining, our insects are declining. And once you start learning more about that, you learn that these animals are dependent on native plants and healthy ecosystems, and when invasive plants are in the picture, that’s not the case. They’re disrupting habitats and ecosystem function.
Mike: So, if I’m in my backyard doing my weekend yard work, if there is an invasive plant in my shrubs or my, you know, things up on the border of yards and stuff, and you see things—vines growing—what am I seeing?
Izzy: Like, how would Mike go about identifying that?
Lauren: Yeah, you hit on some really important points. So those unmanaged edges are really hot spots for the invasive plants. Bittersweet vines—everyone’s got them. They’re everywhere. They’re pretty easy to identify once you’ve seen them a few times.
There are a lot of resources online that people can use to identify invasive plants. The unfortunate part of it is a lot of them have been introduced as ornamental landscape plants. So, they’re planted in landscapes—they’re still planted in landscapes. Some of the invasive plants on the list are still for sale in the state. Most of them are on a phase‑out period, so they will no longer be available for sale eventually—through 2028 for most of them.
But yeah, they’re planted in landscapes, they escape, and they take over. There are some really common ones. Japanese barberry—it’s very spiny. It has very oval, like spoon‑shaped leaves—small spoon‑shaped leaves. There are some really key identifying features in some of them, and if you see a patch of plants that you didn’t plant and they’re just taking over, it’s likely you’ve got an invasive plant there.
Mike: So how did they get there?
Lauren: A lot of them are spread by birds. So, birds will eat the fruit and spread them. A lot of them are spread by seeds. Some of the seeds are wind‑borne seeds, so they can spread that way. Sometimes they’re spread by mulch or topsoil that you bring in, so you have to be very careful about where you’re sourcing your landscaping materials from, because they can come in plant fragments, or seeds can come in on that material.
And you can unknowingly spread it all over your yard, and then you’ll have a problem once the seeds start sprouting.
Izzy: So, I know you just mentioned a couple things about the mulch and seeds, and some things out of our control like birds and wind, but is there anything that I could do to prevent these invasive plants from popping up in the first place?
Lauren: There are a couple things you can do. You definitely want to start by taking an inventory of the plants in your yard, the land that you manage. What’s there? What did you plant? What is an invasive? What’s a non‑native?
So not all non‑native plants become invasive, so that’s something to keep in mind. Your common garden weeds—dandelions—they’re not considered invasive, but they are non‑native.
Other things that you can do, once you’ve got an inventory of what’s going on and what you have, try to avoid bare soil. So invasive plants are opportunistic. They really like disturbed areas. They like unmanaged areas. They like bare ground.
So, if you have bare spots or sparse lawn, you can try to make that more covered with vegetation that’s desirable to kind of prevent them from getting a foothold. They’re really hard to prevent from coming, but the good thing is that young plants and seedlings or small infestations are pretty easy for folks to manage if they catch them early.
Mike: So, talk about the course a little bit. When is it offered? Who can take it? Who teaches it? And how successful has it been so far?
Lauren: The course has been very successful. It’s our first year running it. We just finished our first cohort. We had 150 people in the first group—over 150 people. It’s an online, asynchronous course, so it’s totally at the participant’s leisure. They can do it when they have time.
There were seven modules that each had a different topic. We had about 15 guest speakers provide content. I also provided content, and so did my colleague Alyssa, who works in the Sustainable Landscapes Program. A lot of people that we knew working in this area in Connecticut provided material. So, we had some people from CT DEEP. We had people from the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, Eversource—just anybody who has a stake in managing invasive plants in Connecticut was influential in how we made the content for the course.
So beyond recorded presentations, we had some recorded case studies. So, we’d go out in the field and record people doing the work. And we also had supplemental material—helpful resources that were included as content. We had an evaluation after the course. We had a really high response rate for that evaluation, and 98% of the people who took our evaluation were very satisfied or satisfied with the overall course content and delivery.
So, we thought it was very successful for our first year. Again, we really had no idea how it was going to go, and we have a lot of interest for our next offering of the course, which will be in 2027.
Mike: That’s a really high rate.
Izzy: I know.
Mike: I hope our listeners think of the podcast the same way.
Izzy: I don’t know.
Mike: So, who can take—this is not, for the non-academic community listeners, this is not a typical academic course at UConn, right? Who can take it?
Lauren: Yes, good question. So, it’s not geared toward undergraduate students, although they could take it if they wanted to. It’s geared toward adults primarily in Connecticut who are interested in managing invasive plants.
So, we targeted home gardeners, green industry professionals—so your landscapers, your gardeners that work in the profession. We also targeted land trust volunteers, so a lot of the land in Connecticut is owned by land trusts, and they often have groups of volunteers that help with their stewardship, so we had some of them.
We also had municipal employees who are involved in managing invasive plants. So those are the people that took it. Those are the people we hope take it again.
Mike: And when will it be offered again?
Lauren: It will be offered again early 2027.
Mike: And is there a cost to take the class?
Lauren: There is a cost to take the class. It’s around $250.
Mike: Okay.
Lauren: That’s what we’re thinking for this next round, but it’s still to be determined. We do offer some group rates, so if a group like a land trust wants to train their entire volunteer force, we can offer group rates for that sort of situation.
Mike: And the enrollment—you said—would open when, in the winter sometime?
Lauren: Yes, enrollment will open in the winter. There is a website that I can share that has the link where folks can sign up to get more information for when registration will open the next time.
Mike: And we’ll put the link in the podcast description so people can check it out. So, tell me a little bit about—you mentioned earlier the economic impact broadly of these invasive plants. Obviously, if they’re in your backyard, they might look cruddy, they might not look appealing, but how do these plants affect the economy?
Lauren: So, the best example I can provide for that is hydrilla in the Connecticut River. So that one is an invasive plant—it’s an aquatic invasive. It chokes the river channels; it chokes where the boats are docking—the marinas. It’s bad for recreation. It’s very costly to manage.
I don’t have the exact numbers, but if the river is to be useful to people for recreation and for industry, the hydrilla is very problematic, so it reduces economic options if it’s choking the river like it is. So, it’s been ongoing to manage it in the river, and that’s really the best example where it’s a very clear economic impact related to tourism and related to any industry that’s using the river.
Mike: Well, this has been an important topic, and we really appreciate you stopping by today to do the podcast. I always say, you know, UConn obviously—we’re academics, and we grant degrees—but there are certain front porches of the university, whether it’s the Dairy Bar or athletics or Extension, that really help out everybody in the state. So, thank you for all the work you’re doing.
Lauren: Yes, thank you for inviting me and for helping me spread the word about this important issue.
Mike: Okay. Izzy, happy Fourth of July.
Izzy: Happy Fourth.
Mike: Happy America 250, and hope everybody has a safe holiday, and we will catch you later in July. And thanks for listening to the UConn 360 Podcast.