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LEARNING TO LOVE WEEDS
06/06/2024
For starters, please may I remind you that some of our most attractive wild flowers are often disparagingly termed “weeds” because they readily grow in vegetable and flower beds where you don’t want them. Dislike of these highly successful native plants is fostered by commercial interests in promoting herbicides, but weeds deserve our admiration for their success, and many are very beautiful – think dandelions, buttercups, daisies, clovers and thistles. Even those that do not have arresting blossoms, such as nettles and docks, are fascinatingly attractive when you look at them closely – and our weeds are foodplants for a host of insects and other invertebrates. Of course, you don’t want too many in your vegetable patch or flower beds competing with your crops and ornamental plantings, but allowing them to colonise less formal areas, the sides of paths, under trees, and shrubs and in lawns and grassy areas, produces a beautiful tapestry and a great resource for insects, birds and other animals.
At Betts Ecology, as many of you know, we promote wild flowers and botanical species-richness as a vital part of our biodiversity policies on the green spaces we manage but I hope people will embrace the idea for their gardens, too. It is heartening to see this thinking being introduced for example, at the Chelsea Flower Show where weeds were declared “hero plants” last year. Many local councils, too, have greatly reduced their use of herbicides, and are leaving areas of grass unmown until the wild flowers have set seed, and the seed has ripened and fallen.
So, please, think twice before you mow the grass so short that even low-growing wild flowers cannot survive. And you might consider leaving a few nettles, thistles, dandelions and other wild flowers to grace your gardens. The local wildlife will thank you.
© Betts Ecology
