Saturday's mail brought us a flier from Lawn Doctor, offering to help us get a "lush, green, weed-free lawn." This description is so unlike our current lawn that I couldn't help wondering whether they had sent around spies to scope out the yards in the area and target the folks that they assumed were most in need of help. Our yard has become more or less a safe haven for weeds of all kinds, from chickweed to dandelions to wild garlic. One whole slope in our backyard is thickly covered with purple dead nettles, which look beautiful in the morning sunlight as I hang out the laundry. Yet I realize that the sight of this thick, lush growth would sent many if not most homeowners running for a bottle of Roundup. This fact moves me to wonder: who exactly decided that these flowers are "weeds," anyhow? Whose idea was it that the ideal lawn should be a thick, dense carpet of turfgrass with nothing else in it? Why is grass better than dandelions?
My handy desktop dictionary defines a weed as "a wild plant growing where it is not wanted and in competition with cultivated plants." So basically, these various wildflowers are only weeds if you don't want them where they are. I'll readily agree that in my garden, a dandelion is a weed, because it's using up water and nutrients that I want to save for my tomatoes. But a lot of people seem to assume that every part of the yard should be filled with "cultivated plants," and therefore wild plants of any kind, anywhere, must be weeds. This seems like an awfully wasteful approach, since it requires you to get rid of all the plants that grow naturally in your yard, with no assistance from you, and put in plants that don't grow there naturally, which will require constant attention from you to keep them looking their best. For example, to keep a grass lawn looking good, you have to mow it, water it, fertilize it, and, oh yes, exercise constant vigilance to keep out the "weeds." (Or you can pay someone like Lawn Doctor to do it, to the tune of about $300 a year. Sure, you may have to stay inside for a couple of hours after they've sprayed all those chemicals around, but isn't it worth it to have a "lush, green, weed-free lawn"?)
So what's the ecofrugal alternative? Well, here's one that's really simple: if only unwanted plants are weeds, then all I have to do to get a "weed-free" lawn is to declare that all plants are welcome in my yard. Without pulling up a single plant, I'll have eliminated all the "weeds" by declaring them to be non-weeds, and it won't cost me a cent!
Live and let live is a perfectly fine idiom whether applied to folks or weeds. I'd just point out that when it comes time for a real estate sale you might have to compromise since 'curb appeal' is a real phenomenon with real dollars at stake. 'Til then have fun embracing the diversity in your yard.
ReplyDeleteReceived this comment from Tim by e-mail:
ReplyDeleteAs far as I can tell, most people consider
anything that grows there naturally to be a weed. People even use the term "weed tree" to describe willows and, less often, maple trees simply because they are supposed to grow here.
Not too different from our use of "pests" really. Originally, a pest was something you had a good reason for not wanting around, like mice and roaches in your kitchen. Now people talk about squirrels and some types of birds as "pests." Paradoxically, the "bird pests" are generally the ones that are not
natural here.
So why is it that a Sparrow is a pest because
it does not belong here, but a Dandelion is a weed because it does?
Me, I want a garden that is beautiful, a garden that is a haven for wildlife, a garden that is fruitful and feeds us.
ReplyDeleteSo many of the plants that grow gaily and prolifically are non-native: they were brought here accidentally or deliberately from other continents. Dandelions and Lamium purpureum are good examples. If they were tidy plants that didn't try to take over the world, I would mind them. But the spread of invasive thugs reduces biodiversity and causes serious disruptions of the food chain. Our native insects have not evolved to eat them. Birds and lots of other animals depend on insects. Our ecosystems have been seriously damaged.
This is why I buy and plant native plants.
Some of the plants in my yard are weeds. I don't want them, because they don't play nice and share. If we gave every plant in the yard license to grow at will, we'd be completely overrun by vines and bamboo. I'm not going to spray Roundup. Our neighbor used to spray weedkiller, and it was death to biodiversity. Only the hardiest vines survived. But our yard is full of invasive thugs and we weed weed weed to slow their advance in our little corner of the world.
Some places to look for more information:
http://bringingnaturehome.net/
http://www.ecosystemgardening.com/about-2
http://wildflower.org/
I can understand labeling a plant as a weed because it is invasive (i.e., drives out native like a Wal-Mart destroying local businesses). But I resent the idea that I'm supposed to mercilessly uproot every plant that grows in my yard with no assistance from me, and replace it with a plant that has to be bought from a store, watered, fertilized, and generally nursed like a baby. Dandelions are certainly aggressive (though I didn't realize they were non-native), and I am actually contemplating putting down some corn gluten to stop their spread, as recommended by Mike McGrath of "You Bet Your Garden" (http://www.gardensalive.com/article.asp?ai=454). But what about the purple deadnettles? They're a native plant, and they're pretty, and I like them. Why should I have to kill them?
ReplyDeleteYou may like the Lamium purpureum, but it isn't native to the USA. It's an invasive from Europe or Asia, and it's a thug. I'm not saying that you should replace them with grass that is also not native. I'm just saying that this particular plant is one of the signs that we as humans are mucking up our habitat.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that it is worthwhile to plant things that have to be hugely coddled. I buy plants that need to be watered enough to get established and then I leave them be. Native plants are really great for that, if I site them carefully.
But look, if you're going to say that any species that isn't a native just doesn't belong here and ought to be wiped out, then shouldn't we also shoot all the sparrows and burn down all the apple orchards? I mean, heck, couldn't you go so far as to say *humans* shouldn't be here, because there weren't any 25,000 years ago? The minute we arrived, we did in fact start wiping out native species...a whole wave of mass extinctions. But it seems to me that getting rid of us isn't really an option at this point, and neither is getting rid of dandelions or deadnettles. They're here to stay, no matter what we do. So we might as well eat them instead of poisoning them.
ReplyDelete