Weeds!

Whenever I show my garden to a new person, I say, before they have seen a thing, “I love weeds.” Some of them think I am kidding, but they soon realize that I am not.

When I was living in a small hillbilly town in upstate NY as a child, I spent a lot of time out wandering in the woods near my home, and once upon a time came across an old abandoned garden. This garden was contained by tall hedges forming a large rectangle, and was full of once-tended-then-derelict cultivated flowers, along with a whole lot of gorgeous weeds. I would go there and look for the fairies or spirits who were tending it. I believe in spirits you see, very much so. If you believe in them, they appear to you. But you must believe. Like Tinkerbell.

One of my favorite classes in high school was a biology class, for which we once had to go out identifying the trees in town. I got really into that assignment. I then became very interested in identifying all the weeds around me. I got myself a copy of Peterson’s Guide to the Wildflowers, and set off to give names to all those pretty things in the world, the ones shooting up from cracks in the sidewalks, climbing up trees, coloring the fields and forests everywhere.

It’s a beautiful world we live in, people. Charming, and I was very much charmed by a Birds Foot Trefoil, a Trillium, even by poison ivy, which is an especially lovely plant. It wasn’t long before I also became intrigued by the medicinal properties of nature’s abundance.

My garden is unusual by most gardening standards. I developed my style while living in a beautiful brownstone in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, NY, where I had a very small backyard, a mere 900 square feet - large by city standards! Oh, I had my bit of orderliness when you first walked out into the space, a small piece of lawn, large enough for a few kids to enjoy dips in a kiddie pool, or for my young son to bat around wiffle balls. There was a climbing rose on a trellis over a walkway, and a formal-ish flower bed with a weeping cherry in the center, lilies, hydrangea, sedum and other pretty cultivated things nicely placed around it. But my favorite part of the garden was the very last ten feet in the back. Here, in varying depths of shade, was my private wild garden, a space that looked like the fairies tended it. I let a lot of weeds grow among the forest-loving cultivated plants. I put myself a lovely stone bench in there, and would let the spirits come to me.

I can’t live without a bit of wild space of my very own.

Now that I’ve moved again into a house with a small backyard, I have followed the same template as that garden in Brooklyn. Close to the house is more tame, more socially acceptable, people ooh and ahh over the varieties of hosta I can grow without fear of deer decimation. But as you walk toward the back of my yard, weeds begin to appear, lots of weeds.

Dandelion is the first and most notable, and is everywhere in the walkways between my raised vegetable beds. What a wonderful plant dandelion is! Every single part of the plant is edible and/or medicinal for humans, and I am convinced it detoxifies not only our bodies, but also the land it grows in. Chickweed, birds foot trefoil, plantain, clover, cleavers, docks, lamb’s quarters, sourgrass, goldenrod – all these and more grow happily in my yard. Yes, I do weed them so they don’t take over the other plants I’ve put out there: calendula (nothing will take over that stuff!), yarrow, hyssop, chamomile, echinacea, foxglove etc. I let all these things reseed as they will, and weed them as needed all year long, sometimes to harvest for tinctures, poultices, balms or bouquets.

It’s wild out there!!! The way I love it.

Here are a few shots, taken today, of what many people think looks like quite a mess. It's producing far more food than I can eat, mess that it is, and makes me, my dog, and my two cats very happy.

wildflowers 2.jpg