The reader is presented with a paper conducted at the intersection of the study of e-participation and the environmental problem of invasive plants and the legal aspects of its solution. In order to collect data on the extent to which existing e-participation channels allow solving real problems of citizens, the authors used a participant observation method («test purchase»): they registered on portals and sent appeals to government agencies on real social problems. The topic of the appeals was an environmental problem relevant to Russia - overgrowing of territories with invasive plant - Sosnowsky’s hogweed (SH). A total of 136 appeals were generated and sent about overgrowing in two regions of Russia - St. Petersburg and Leningrad region. The obtained results allowed us to draw conclusions about the factors influencing the quality of problem solving in the regions under study. The legal status of the e-participation channel (official letter or message through the portal) through which the appeals were submitted influenced the completeness of the responses, but did not always lead to a solution to the problem. The authors note the category of the territory where the overgrowing occurred as a significant factor. Thus, on lands located in cities, the fight was more effective due to greater civic activity around. At the same time, state-owned suburban areas, about which complaints are rarely written, were cleared of invasive plants rather poorly, and there was a long bureaucratic redirection of appeals. The presence of a regional law on the fight against invasive plants in one of the two studied regions had a significant impact on the quality of problem solving only in cases where the lands were privately owned. In the region where there is a law, officials were more active in issuing warnings and fines, but the final solution to the problem depended on the activity of the owner himself.