This month, in her penultimate chapter, Ma Yogini deals with every gardener’s nemisis – the weed.
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Valerian at Walmer, Kent
Weed: a wild flower growing where it is not wanted especially among crops or garden plants. (OED)
Hours have gone by, backaches been induced, fortunes spent on chemicals to rid our gardens of these naughty little invaders intent on taking over the ordered world of gardening. Some of them are indeed vigorous nuisances. Ground elder for example, pretty enough waving its creamy flower heads, is invasive, destructive in that it eventually will choke any tender vegetable within its reach, and very difficult to get rid of – the smallest bits of root left in the ground seem to multiply like dragons’ teeth. When I was a child we knew it as Mother Die and would never pick it or indeed any other umbellifers, for fear of inducing instant maternal death. Why was this so, I wonder, since it is not poisonous and used to be used as a medicine against gout. Possibly we were being discouraged from picking lest other more toxic varieties came our way. Other popular names tend rather to refer to the tenacity of its roots – Devil’s guts or Seven-toed Jack for example. Getting it out is hard work!
Most gardeners like a tidy plot especially when growing vegetables, but we have to compromise between the amount of control we like to exercise and the amount of time and effort we can or are prepared to expend in achieving it. The walled vegetable gardens of old were tended by a small army of gardeners who grew prime quality vegetables and cut flowers for the house in weed free ranks. Private gardens like this hardly exist these days (though examples can be seen at several heritage properties) but they seem to remain a touchstone for amateur gardeners operating on a much smaller scale. My father, who had little interest growing things he couldn’t eat, was very relaxed about weeds in the flower beds or even in the lawn but the vegetables had to grow unimpeded by these little horticultural thieves who came in the night and stole the nutrients from the cabbages. His vegetables and soft fruits were plentiful and delicious but I have never quite mustered the determination and energy to continue his war against invaders.
Many contemporary amateur gardeners have developed a more accepting attitude to weeds and to the idea of wild areas providing not only a welcome break for the gardener who can leave the bit by the shed to look after itself, but also a small haven for our diminishing wildlife. This is part of a movement for cherishing our natural heritage of wildlife and flowers two landmarks of which movement would be Miriam Rothschild’s work in the 1970’s planting her meadows with such wildflowers as moon daisies, poppies and orchids (she once produced a seed mix called ‘Farmer’s Nightmare’) and Chris Baines’ publication in 1986 of How to make a Wildlife Garden. In embracing this movement to recreate a past in which we were in closer touch with our natural environment, it should be remembered that the two most iconic features of this remembered past – the bluebell wood and the wildflower meadow – were the result of human management of the environment and control of nature. Coppicing of woodland to produce wood for domestic purposes opened up areas of the woodland floor to light and allowed the bluebells to flourish while haymaking for animal fodder prevented close grazing until after the flowers had bloomed and shed their seeds ready for the following summer. Even in the ‘wild’ meadow certain invaders would be unwelcome. Some you see are weeds and a nuisance and wild flowers are just a little bit different despite the OED and we are never very far away from the effects of human efforts to control.
The traffic between nature and the garden has not been by any means one way. Many a garden plant has jumped the wall and gone native, ground elder being a case in point. Originally introduced, probably by the Romans, as a pot plant (i.e. to go in the cooking pot to flavour whatever was cooking therein) it took very happily to colonising its new home. Japanese knotweed and giant hogweed were both introduced as garden plants and are now most heartily wished back to whence they came. However, horse chestnuts (sadly now themselves threatened by an invader), sycamores and buddlejas are all naturalisations to rejoice in and are possibly not thought of as introductions at all but part of our natural heritage. So I still don’t really know what a weed is and will not spend too many back-breaking hours rooting them out but will take pleasure in whatever is lovely wherever I find it.
