I’VE become a balsam basher. I have launched an early campaign against the Himalayan nuisance, a weed whose spread and height rivals the beanstalk.

Every year it moves further into my garden from the nearby banks and every germinating seed has to be lifted.

The weed is an introduced plant which has escaped from gardens and run wild, rapidly colonising river banks and other areas of damp ground. It is an annual which grows to about 2m with purplish-pink slipper shaped flowers in June - August. When the pods are mature, they explode sending hundreds of seeds about 20ft when touched.

Unfortunately as they get hold they suppress the growth of grasses and native British plants leaving the banks bare of vegetation in autumn and winter and liable to erosion.

The plant is easy to cut, or pull up, provided there is adequate access. However, typically it grows among bushes and brambles, in my case prickly gorse,and is inaccessible and unless it is cut below the lowest node, it will regrow and flower later in the season.

I’ve already pulled hundreds of the pesky things up and keep finding more and more.

These things are sent to try us.

One advantage of the stuff is that it protects the rabbit and fox holes in the banks from the hated gunmen and their dogs who find killing little animals fun.