Stinging Nettle Spreading

I wonder if stinging nettles are commonly growing in the New York area. I want to avoid buying them, and I know that where I come from they grow all over the place (I am from Sweden) but people here do not seem to know what I am talking about. Do you know?

You can occasionally find stinging nettle patches on the North American continent, but for some reason they rarely take over the way they do in Europe. I suspect the reason is that North American native plants are better adapted to the local soil micro-organisms and do better than introduced species such as stinging nettle. As an example, in a damp patch on my property there used to be a patch of stinging nettle, but over the years it has been replaced by Virginia waterwort.