overgrow

present singular third person overgrows · participle present overgrowing · past overgrew · participle past overgrown

1. intransitiveTo grow beyond one's boundaries or containment, or beyond the proper size.
2. transitiveTo grow over; (of one thing) to cause (a second thing) to become overgrown (with or by the first thing).

   If there is ivy overgrowing things, then we shall clean it up.

   2008, J. R. Ward, Lover Enshrined, page 470

   2 more examples

   The utmost they aimed at doing was thoroughly to clear the old Church of all the corruptions and superstitions which had disfigured it in the course of ages, and which, like the flaunting ivy overgrowing some ancient building, not only concealed the Church's fair proportions, but shut out the light of heaven from its windows, and more or less dislocated its structure.

   1886, Edward Meyrick Goulburn, Meditations upon the liturgical gospels for the minor festivals, page 28

   One wall advertised a dense muddle of ivy overgrowing its prefab brick, while a miniature moat with a jerry-built bridge arcing over it snaked around one of the "halls" (as real universities dub their constituent structures).

   2002, James Morrison, Broken Fever: Reflections of Gay Boyhood, page 196