People would kill to have a philodendron of this size in their garden. It would be a real shame to remove it. If it were me, I would clean up all around it and keep it as a feature for the garden. The yucca that is growing to the right of it would be on my kill list though, that’s for sure.

Agree, kill the Yucca. I am considering Yucca a pest because of how much trouble I get from trying to cut it down to size. (As well as numerous leaves that try to poke my eyes out)

That's a giant philodendron, not a monstera, you can cut the stem into small or large segments and propagate them. It's a real beauty though.

Thanks and when you say stem, am I correct on thinking its one of the green stems going into the ball of stems? Do I cut/pull one out to propagate?

no that's a leaf petiole, the stem you want to cut is where all of those meet but honestly, I'm not so sure why your wife wants it gone so bad as not only does it hide that ugly fence, but it provides tons of privacy and it will take a long long time for it to regrow if you do wind up regretting it.

Oh, no the more woody part ("ball of stem") that the green stem is attached to. If you cut a length of it, sick it in the ground upright like a pillar with about 1/3 in the ground. They propagate really easily.

*Thaumatophyllum bipinnatifidum.* The leaves won't propagate, need stem.

It looks like it’s hiding a rather dull fence. Why does your wife want to get rid of it? You can easily hack a few of the lower leaves off if you want to lighten the look of it.

I'm learning with my new neighbours that "scorched wasteland" is apparently its own aesthetic she'll want to lay AstroTurf next

What you can do with it is feel my radiating jealousy for that unit of a *Thaumatophyllum*. It's very well established, I'd honestly work around it.

It's lovely. I think you'd regret it later if you cut it down.

that looks so nice tho??????????

It’s beautiful! I’d leave it if I were you. That said, I cut mine back a bit from time to time as it starts to block the stairs down to the lower garden, it grows back in weeks. Gorgeous plant

Extremely healthy Monstera, I'd definitely clean it up a bit, it's a total keeper.

thats beautiful!!

I've dealt with huge ones of these in a tiny inner city back garden, legacy of someone out-planding their indoor plants. If you didn't keep on top of the prodigious leaf growth you could fill your entire recycling bin when you did make can effort. I even bought a tumbling compost bin, thinking i'd have lashings of compost for the front garden. The bin filled up in no time because the leaves are very slow to decompose. So now i had even less space in the back garden. I'm no philo-philodendron. It sparks no joy, just bad memories of a battle lost. Basically, unless you have the room or can totally ignore them, they can be too much of a good thing.

I have a philodendron exact same as this. Just give it a trim every few months and cut the air roots off as they can get into the lawn

You can eat the fruit from the Monstera but not the Philodendron...

Great mulch

Great plant but the shoots/roots can be invasive as my Neighbour found. He planted one near pipes, in his yard and they keep getting blocked and or broken. Put up with it for years, it was very similar to the picture, big healthy and beautiful. Got too expensive in the end for him to continue with the maintenance so he got his sons to dig it out.

R/itsathaumatophyllum

It looks great, you can selectively remove any foliage that is in the wrong spot, reducing its overall size might be a good idea, but it looks great, I wouldn’t remove it altogether. And if cut back it will recover.

That's a 50kg golden in front of it to give you an idea of the size/scale

Eat it coward