When
approaching the gardener’s eternal task of weeding the first question is, what
is a weed? The simple answer is, a plant
in the wrong place. Nettles are great wildlife habitats under hedges and on
road verges, but do they belong in a strawberry bed? Probably not, although I’ve
been known to let a few flourish between my tough old blackcurrant bushes and
the big leylandii hedge. Grubbing most of the nettle roots out every autumn stopped
them spreading.
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| Campanula on the steps |
That leylandii
hedge was another matter. I didn’t plant it, I didn’t like it, I definitely didn’t
want to have to trim it three times a year, though somehow it got cut. So was
that a weed? To dig it out would be a massive project and the wildlife loved
it. Sparrows and wrens and spiders nested, so it served a purpose. I partly
screened it behind a pear tree and a hazel, do I didn’t have to look at it too
much.
Now I have
a newer garden, smaller and 250 miles south. Actually it’s an old and overgrown
garden, though new to me. Dandelions and nettles are the least of my problems,
in fact there aren’t any nettles. I spent my first season here, which was
spring into summer, battling massive brambles which took over a corner by the
conservatory. They were so strong they were forcing their way through the seals
on the windows and into the conservatory itself. These were undoubtedly weeds!
And l have discovered that there’s more than one type of bramble, my Sussex
ones have very tough stems and stiff, hooked, red thorns. I needed thick clothing
and even thicker, leather gloves – they still got me. They made the West
Yorkshire brambles I was used to seem like wimps.
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| overgrown with hops |
The
following season – summer into autumn, I realised there was a problem even
bigger than the brambles, and much harder to get rid of. Hops. Not a calm
little golden hop which you can see growing along civilised little picket
fences beside charming, whitewashed cottages, this was a massive thug of a
tough, green, bristly hop. And don’t tell me to make beer, the hop was
smothering a grape vine and I prefer wine. To begin with I couldn’t tell the
difference between the hop and the grape, their leaves when young look quite
similar. It’s taken me two years but I now do know.
The
thuggish hop bind was also binding its way around and through a fence above a
six-foot retaining wall, it was crushing a small , sorrowful apple tree, trying to demolish
a huge, beautiful rambler rose and flattening everything in between. It had to
go. I slashed and dragged and tugged and disentangled. I filled sack after sack
and took to the tip. Hops have incredibly tough roots/rhyzomes which go
everywhere just under the soil and pop up little shoots wherever you’re not
looking. And if you chop then up in the soil they have no problem whatever, I’m
now in my third summer of hop destroying. Give me ground elder any day – and yes
I’ve got that too!
After all
the battles, one of the pleasures of a new garden is watching what unexpectedly
comes up. I’ve never seen red valerian before, when it sprang up in awkward
places I thought it was a strange seaside weed and I didn’t even know what it
was called. Gardeners World list it as a weed, however it is interesting to
look at and has some lovely names - kiss-me-quick, fox's brush, devil's beard
and Jupiter's beard! It seems to love dry places and I’ve encouraged it in a
couple of places, especially around the stone steps at the front of the house.
The other plant there was a small, dense and ferocious climbing rose with
misleading little pink flowers and vicious thorns, which had been deliberately twined
around the railings and handrail – making them unusable as a support for
human-kind if you valued your hands. So the strange valerian stayed, the snarky
little rose has been cut right down. Which was the weed?
Of course
the garden has all the usual, more unassuming weeds; groundsel, bindweed,
goose grass, milkweed, sow-thistle, plantain, scarlet pimpernel, buttercup etc.
All easy enough to pull out of the sandy soil if necessary. Apart from the afore
mentioned ground elder I'm in luck, I haven’t found the tougher stuff like docks or
either of the two banes of a former garden, creeping cinquefoil and wood avens.
Creeping cinquefoil is quite a cheerful little thing, looking a bit like a
small strawberry plant with yellow flowers when you first see it, but don’t be
fooled. Turn your back and its runners have covered half the garden and set
deep taproots which have to be dug or pulled out whole or they joyfully re-sprout.
Mowing only encourages them. Wood avens has similar leaves but less initial charm and
sheds its sticky seeds everywhere; if you let one seed this year, you’ll have two
hundred next year.
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How many weeds here? Dandelion, bramble, bindweed, goose
grass, couch grass and the elephant in the garden... ground elder!
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I only have
a little lawn now, small enough to be kept under control with a strimmer and hand
weeding. In every lawn I’ve had, I always leave a certain number of dandelions
because I like them. They cheer me up especially in early spring when the grass sulks and everything around is
bare. I’ve always admired their stunning yellow flowers, fluffy seeds and toothed
leaves, they are beautiful plants and great for insects; they spread like
weeds... They’re also quite happy growing out of the cracked concrete on the
patio, no matter how often I think I’ve pulled them up.
And I
positively encourage daisies in my lawn, childhood memories of collecting
armfuls of these delightful little flowers may be colouring my judgement!
Anyway, the only time I really tried to have a weed-free lawn, some 20 years
ago, I used a product called Feed n Weed. Everything grew twice as fast, weeds
and grass, so the only result was far more mowing. I don’t like mowing.
So grass is
a weed too, in the flowerbeds, under the lavender and beneath the new pergola.
The grass here is couch-grass which is easy to pull, some oats have sprung up and
some very tall, tough grass which I think has come from some birdseed. Then
there’s the pink oxalis which isn’t really wanted there, it’s another one which
springs up in determined clumps all over the place and has tough roots. Then there's the purple campanula which I’ve never had in any other garden. Here it
grows prettily along the edges of paths and up the steps but is not really
invasive, I don’t have to weed it out. I just trim it back if it’s coming out
too far and pull the top off at the end of the season. I’ve decided that’s not
a weed.
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| the amazing alien poppy |
The last new
‘weed’ I’ve found is a poppy. We have moved a small amount of soil and rubble to
an area by the front of the house where we eventually want to build the ground
up. It’s hidden from the road by the steps (denuded of small angry rose) and a fuchsia
bush, so I don’t look at it much. But it’s visible, just, from the front window,
or rather the three foot high poppy plant which unexpectedly sprouted up from the
debris is. Unlike the small, jolly yellow and orange poppies with green stems
and leaves which I’m used to, this giant has silvery grey foliage and produced
four huge many-petalled, carnation-like flowers in a delicate shade of mauve.
It must have been seeded by birds, there are no poppies elsewhere in the garden.
Neighbours down the road have purple poppies in their front gardens, but none
with the same many petalled form. This amazing
weed now has four huge seed-heads developing, I’ll keep the seed. I wonder if
they’ll come true to type, or if they are just some kind of wonderful alien mutation.
Sun shines
on small children 
