2:00 PM
Rooster
Eeyore said it best,
“A weed is a flower too, once you get to know it.”
I never cease to be amazed at the fear that passes over folk’s faces when I suggest to them that dandelions or creeping charlie are valuable in the landscape.
Maybe it’s because I’m a rebel, or maybe it’s because of my respect for plants, but I’ve always loved weeds, in fact I can safely say weeds are my heroes. Take the dandelion for instance. How many of us are completely unaware of the power of this plant?
Dandelion is only the Diana Prince like moniker through which the super hero also known as Taraxacum hides her secret Wonder Woman identity. Providing free nourishing food, and medicine for the masses, offering soil fertility, and perfect plant companionship for tomatoes and other shallow rooted crops, and all of this in a form that is simple, ruggedly beautiful, and completely unstoppable. Sounds like your average garden super-hero job description to me.
I for one think weeds are terrific. I think it’s silly to be terrified of flowers.
Gardening is a co-creative process, the gardener and the garden both creating away night and day, each with their own ideas and intentions. As a landscape designer I like to remind myself that humans are far from alone in their desire to alter the world around them to better suit their own needs. Every time a bird in the woods eats a seed and poops it out that little bird increases the population of its favorite foods in the forest. This very humbling notion means that all the high-browed landscape design schools, students, and practitioners are essentially performing the same function that a bird performs when it shits. So while we landscape designers have our notions and practices, the birds, animals, plants, soils, and landscapes have their own notions and practices, which brings me back to weeds.
Nature uses weeds to perform functions that are often beyond our capacity to easily grasp or even understand at all. I like to point out to folks that in a lawn made of sod grass for instance, our hero the dandelion will drive roots into the earth allowing minerals and nutrients from deep in the ground to be accessed by the shallow rooted turf grass. The channels made in the ground by dandelions roots also help drive water and air downward increasing the overall capacity for root depth and allowing water to enter the water table instead of rushing off to damage local creeks, rivers, or lakes.If the garden is like our mother in how it knows us, nurtures us, punishes us when we deserve it, but loves us unconditionally, then the Earth is like our grandmother. The Earth let’s us do what we wish, and she gives us everything we can need or want, but she knows so much more then we can imagine that we are silly to question her ways.
When you go back far enough in time, it’s plain to see that the “gardens” of this Earth created the very bloodlines of those who call themselves “gardeners”. From this humble perspective we can rethink what it means to be a weed, and if indeed it may be that the worst, most pernicious weed seeds sprout in our own imaginations.
Let us yank from the root the damaging notion that some plants are evil. Let us instead see beauty, life, and nourishment wherever we can, and let’s all celebrate the fact that nature cared enough to give us each other and the rest of the creatures on this lonely planet to keep us happy and healthy.
Click Here to learn about some of the terrific edible and medicinal weeds that grace the presence of our Minneapolis yards and gardens.
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