Working with WEEDS

Weeds tend to be much maligned by gardeners, and indeed too much of our precious gardening time and energy seems to be devoted to pulling them out, spraying them or otherwise trying to rid our gardens of them. Gardeners are such down-to-earth, happy people on the whole. They have fairly good mental health, thanks to all that grounding gardening they do, and yet they can go from Jekyll to Hyde in a matter of seconds when you mention weeds. The word “hate” suddenly gets used a lot.

Imagine a garden without problem plants, a garden without the need for weeding. It is not hard. We just need to look at weeds a little differently. This does not mean we let the weeds take over. It means we get to know them before we judge them.

For too long we have looked at weeds as the enemy