Question 10

Most important of all:
Is it what you don’t want to grow?

No single characteristic defines a plant as a weed

But these questions may help you define a plant as a weed. You cannot determine conclusively weediness or non-weediness even by looking plants up in a guide to weeds. A cultivar out of control in your garden may not even get a nod in any weed book you find. A plant you cherish may be featured as a weed in someone else’s book.

Our gardens express our own deepest creative desires. As long as you don’t impose on the neighbors, disrupt the environment or add so many dangerous plants that you kill off neighborhood pets, decide on your own aesthetic.

The biggest “rule”, relax. Commercial standards set 85% weed free lawn as the target. That’s a lot of weeds. Garden police exist only on HGTV and in imagination. Our forbears moved to the U.S. for freedom of expression, liberation from tyranny, and the right to own their own land—life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Pursue your bliss.

Why define a plant as a weed at all?

Ultimately, the definition of a plant as a weed seems subjective or relative, that is, it becomes a “weed” in context, relative to human and environmental circumstances, uses and consequences.

Some philosophy

Plato in his Republic was seeking a definition of an absolute truth. Yet plants grow without any notion of what we or Plato view as “ideal” or “against the ideal”, they just answer nature’s call and do her bidding. In typical American rebellion against the confines of ideas past, William James in his seminal Varieties of Religious Experience defines truth as a relative thing and states that “if it works it must be true”. By his definition, if the weeds don’t work for you, don’t use them in your garden. Weeds become objectionable only if they lack usefulness to us or if they harm us, our pets, our livestock or our eco-system.

The more I learn about weeds, the more amazed I become at their blend of usefulness and beauty and their problematic nature. Jung observed that each thing contains its opposite. This astutely characterizes the complex opposites contained within any volunteer plants, where a single quality, such as vigor, can confer both benefit and drawback. As you get to know and recognize the weed, you can nod at its good features or chuckle at its ill-repute. You can make a better informed decision about what to do about it: whether or not to pull it out, or what changes to make if you want to keep it out long term and with less effort. It seems to me that no absolute good or evil holds sway in the garden, each good has some drawbacks, each evil has its benefits.

A fairy tale

Rumplestilskin turned dross into gold for the would-be Princess of fairy tale fame in exchange for a promise of her first born son if and when she became queen. It worked, she married the Prince, and when she gave birth, Rumplestilskin returned to claim her first born. She pleaded with him and he conceded that if she could guess his obscure one-of-a-kind name, and only if she could, would he allow her to keep her child. She followed him into the woods and observed him unawares in his lair, dancing around his fire, singing “Rumplestilskin is my name”. The next day, when he returned for the child again, she “guessed” his right name, and he allowed her to keep her new Prince-to-be.

As Rumplestilskin turned dross into gold, some weeds with unknown names turn compacted, troubled soil into erosion-free, nourished earth, while feeding and housing wildlife. But if they are left in place too long because you can’t unearth their identity, they will return year after year to claim your first born chosen cultivars. I never have heard a weed declare its name and have only seen them with labels in a “weed garden” designed for their study. Perhaps this book will help you unearth your weeds’ names in time to save your garden, your back, and your time.

I hope that neophyte gardeners, armed with my book, will march undaunted into their flower beds to recognize, name and eradicate suspected offenders, with an appreciation of the resourceful nature and redeeming value of these so-called villains. I hope you will use the information your weeds impart to you to encourage them to stay away from your garden. You can better defeat an enemy that you have named, understand, and even admire.