I always think back to my Uni days and a quote from one of my ecology lecturers about weeds. "A weed is really a plant that is growing in the wrong place, therefore a rose growing in a wheat field is a weed". It always makes me smile when I look at a plant that is in my garden but classified a weed and looks darn good. I have lots of Herb Robert growing in cracks in the wall with beautiful pink flowers; I don't have the heart to pull it out.
I think a lot of you are missing the point about Richard's blog. He's writing about wild plants and how they should be respected as part of wildlife, not just a weed to be killed! How sad!
Wow, what a fantastic lot of comments. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that weeds are a hot topic for all gardeners. Flo is right, I think we could do with a more relaxed attitude to self-sewn wildflowers, these are the plant part of wildlife. But I also realize that gardeners want to control what they grow in their gardens and that invaders from the outside are not always welcome. My attitude to 'weeds' must be the same as my attitude to 'pests'. As far as I'm concerned nothing is a pest unless it reaches pest proportions. Likewise, nothing is a weed unless I feel compelled to weed it out because it is too invasive.
Well Richard a few years ago I found a very small rather sad hart's-tongue fern growing in a wall in my garden I put it into a pot and forgot about it. When I moved house 2 years ago I brought the rather sad plant with me and planted it in a shady "fern border" It is now quite spectacular and I am very proud of it. I also saved the £8 to £10 it would have cost me in my local garden centre
I agree with Richard and Flo. I let the wild plants grow until either they're getting too prolific (like herb robert) or I want the space for something else. I've got a lovely collection of flowers and grasses. They often look good when there's little esle around. and they're often food for the more mobile visitors. They're only weeds if they get in my way.
I've got a plant that suddenly appeared 4 years ago and I would love to know what it is. It dies off in winter and comes through in the spring. When it first appears it looks like asparagus tips. There are now about 10 stems growing to about 5ft, with delicate, wispy fern-like branches. It has tiny white flowers which turn into orange/red berries. Does anyone know what it is?
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