When setting about your weeds, treat them like champions and dole out gold, silver and bronze medals, awarding top prizes for the most pernicious and troublesome wretches.

There are doubtless many contenders in the final, but Japanese knotweed, Fallopia japonica, has to be first to cross the finishing line. Our Victorian predecessors, bless them, were avid for the plant, as it produced a thicket of tall, bamboo-like stems, swathed in delightful creamy little flowers. And engineers were keen to use it for stabilising new railway embankments, given its colonising success in Japanese volcanoes.

And we’re all left to pick up the pieces. Growing 10cm on a summer’s day, cracking tarmac, undermining property foundations and reducing the value of your house by up to 20 per cent, it’s a fiend. Although you can’t be prosecuted for having it in the garden, you’re breaking the law if you "plant or otherwise cause Japanese knotweed to grow in the wild". And neighbours could prosecute you as this ruthless invader will readily spread to their garden.

No part of the UK is safe, and Central Scotland is notoriously vulnerable, but you can use a tracker app launched by the Environment Agency five years ago to check if there are records for properties or public areas near a house you’re thinking of buying.

If Japanese knotweed is on your land, you’ll never manage to eradicate it yourself, so get professionals to do the job. The plant grows from tiny root fragments, surrounding soil is contaminated and there are fearsome regulations covering transportation and disposal of this hazardous waste. On top of that, some local authority landfill sites don’t meet safety standards for containing the weed.

I’d award the silver medal to Equisetum arvense, horsetail (sometimes wrongly called marestail). As I’ve said before, my firm investigated ways of getting rid of the weed organically. With its roots burrowing down many metres, we found this contemporary of the dinosaurs steadfastly evaded death. Mulching was nearly a waste of time and it took hoeing in its stride, but it was controlled, if not eradicated, by mowing.

If you can’t lay a lawn on an affected area, you’ll find relentless persecution keeps the beast at bay. You’ll stop it in its tracks by digging it out the moment it surfaces. And don’t risk consigning this fella to a compost bin – landfill is the only safe destination.

The weed can also haunt the edges of allotments, so plotholders need to mount a merciless campaign. You might be tempted to spray with glyphosate, but you must first break, or bruise, the stems’ protective silica coating to let the chemical enter the plant. You’d have to repeat this treatment for three or four years, during which time you couldn’t grow anything on the affected ground.

There are several candidates vying for the coveted bronze, but after decades in my war with weeds I have no hesitation in giving the prize to bindweed, Calystegia sepium. Don’t be lulled into falling for its gorgeous white trumpet-shaped flowers, bringing brightness and light to difficult parts of the garden. Their thin, delicate-looking stems ruthlessly entwine any hapless neighbour or support and their seed will prosper in any setting.

Bindweed’s brittle white roots are especially dangerous: the tiniest section left in the ground keeps on growing. And, like its fellow medallists, it’s much too dangerous for a compost heap.

This is the only occasion you’ll ever find me recommending glyphosate as the one realistic solution. I’ve had bindweed growing out of a dyke where the roots were safe unless I dismantled the wall. It insinuates itself through one of my favourite ramblers, where it safely seeds, spreading its progeny far and wide. I have to apply glyphosate gel to a few of the leaves I can reach. The treatment is highly targeted and there’s no spillage.