The forest of brushwood and crumpled canes on either side of the railway track behind Robin Waistell’s bungalow in Maesteg, Bridgend, doesn’t appear particularly menacing. But don’t be fooled. It is winter, and the beast is dormant.
Underground, a 10ft-deep root system is springing into life; in a month or so, reddish shoots will begin to appear. By June, the bright green, deceptively pretty heart-shaped foliage of Fallopia japonica, or Japanese knotweed, will be shoulder high, and it will carry on growing through the summer, at a rate of 10cm-20cm a day. It will once again clamber up past the bungalow’s bedroom windows, obliterating the view and smothering the light.
The two-bedroom home that Waistell, 70, desperately wants to sell so he can return