I have spent much of today weeding someone else’s borders. By weeding, I don’t mean spraying weedkiller around, or poking about optimistically with a hoe. I mean using a handfork, bent double in the borders, teasing out buttercups, docks, stray seedlings and wayward perennial offshoots, picking my way carefully between the plants I wanted to keep. My purpose was not to restore it to some prior ideal, but to choose how to let the planting develop. I left a good looking trio of self-seeded Aquilegias near the back of the border, but removed them from under the box balls at the front. I prised rogue geranium seedlings out of an otherwise clean sweep of Geranium ‘Rozanne’. The tiniest seedlings of cleavers, or goose grass were mercilessly removed, before they could get the better of the emerging Echinops.
Look, I’m not suggesting weeding is rocket science. But it was essential to do a good job today if that garden is to look as it is expected to in the coming months, and it seems that finding someone to do it well has proved hard.
But, to judge from recent minor media eruptions, you would be forgiven for thinking I had wasted my valuable time on a menial task, easily done by any unskilled 15 year old capable of using a litter picker. Or perhaps you worry that I have submitted myself to the tyranny of the weed-obsessed, those whose garden visits are allegedly ruined by the sight of a saucy sprig of ground elder amongst the geraniums?
I dont share these immoderate perspectives, but moderate opinions cut no mustard. So, I shall not be moderate. I shall assert as loudly as I can that weeding is a skilled and complex job, vital to the health and visual aesthetic of our nation’s gardens. So there…
You think that’s overstating it? How many garden designers walk away from a newly completed, pristine project with a heavy heart, knowing that the new owners expect low maintenance to mean absolutely no maintenance? How many garden owners hire a gardener, only to find that they know how to use a hedge trimmer, but don’t know a dandelion from a delphinium?
Somewhere, somehow weeding has become a dirty word. It has simply come to mean the removal of debris, like picking up litter or sweeping the floor. Perhaps it’s just the fact that it has to be done at ground level and the nation’s office-trained backs find that tortuous – or even demeaning.
Somewhere, somehow weeding has become a dirty word. It has simply come to mean the removal of debris, like picking up litter or sweeping the floor. Perhaps it’s just the fact that it has to be done at ground level and the nation’s office-trained backs find that tortuous – or even demeaning.
But as soon as you declare your patch of ground to be a garden, you declare intent. A garden is a creation – the result of every decision you make about what to leave, what to add, what to take away. It’s also the result of the decisions you don’t take of course, the things you mean to do, but never quite get round to. Weeding is the getting round to it, the doing, the making decisions and carrying them out in an ever-changing, interactive environment. (By the way, deciding not to remove a ‘weed’ counts as weeding, as long as you can be sure you really decided, rather than just couldn’t be bothered.) Weeding means getting involved with your garden, handling it, understanding it.
Might it be even more than that? Weeding is chipping away the unwanted stone to reveal the sculpture which exists only in your mind’s eye. It’s the lifting of paint from a canvas. It’s the subtle changing of a chord in the composition of a song.
Weeding is an act of respect for your garden, an act of love.
And when done with skill, knowledge and imagination, you might even say that weeding is art.
And when done with skill, knowledge and imagination, you might even say that weeding is art.
13 Responses to “Weeding is not a dirty word…”
I wouldn't go so far as to call weeding an art, but I do enjoy it. I like the concentration it needs and the ability to inspect my borders at a low level. A day spent weeding means I know what is happening at ground level, my head is clear and I have the satisfaction of seeing a distinct improvement. I am probably regarded as a little sad!
As I spend vast tracts of time weeding other gardens as well as my own I wholeheartedly agree.
It is also about getting up close and personal with the plants. Whats doing well, what needs attention.
I also happen to enjoy weeding, I think of it as a mediation.
I dont read papers, listen to the radio so I have no idea what the "minor media eruptions" are … but I would never let anyone else weed my garden!
K
If not art, then certainly design. I am awash with self sowers so weeding is far more important than planting. It's all about the editing.
I completely agree with you. I'm not really a gardener, but I get great satisfaction from careful weeding. I also find it deeply therapeutic. I've been thinking about why and I think it has to do with maintaining order, but you're right, it also helps you connect with the possibilities available. And the best part is that once you've done it, you get a blank canvas to work on should you wish to.
What a cracking post! I agree totally. I like weeding, of this kind, the down on your knees with a handfork kind. It allows me to see what is happening, to make the plants emerge from the blur, to identify self seeders and weed them, keep them, move them about. We are lucky enough to have help here once a week without which we would disappear under a tide of grass. He mows, he cuts hedges and prunes and could doubtless do other things as he is experienced and skilful. But if I didn't do my own weeding, planting, propagating, seed sowing and planting out I wouldn't know my garden at all. Menial? No. Meditative, as Karen says.
Good to hear from such a skilled and happy bunch of weeders.
Litter-pickers we are not…
totally totally agree, and lovely to see that there are others who feel it worthwhile to get down on their knees.it's needed to enhance an border. but only if you are skilled and know your seedlings from your weedlings and don't want a bare earth policy!
After weeding our rather generous peony border, simply overgrown with ground elder, I can't really call it art… chore more like! Though agree with you in that it has to be done properly, with care and attention. Good weeding workmanship pays too, done properly can be left alone for quite some time!
Leaving behind a neatly weeded bed of flowers gives me a feeling of satisfaction that permeates my whole day. The flowers will grow to the light without weeds bullying them, and with plenty of space and air. Its a pleasing thing, weeding but I had not thought about it before!
You are spot on the money.
Weeding is an art, knowing when to do it, what to pull, what to leave.
It is a very calming and serene way of spending a day, arse up in a border with a handwork and a constantly filling series of buckets (albeit a bit tough on the back) usually with the drone of an iPod as company
Yes, it often doesn't matter that much and rigorous tidiness can be wearisome and unnecessary but, every so often, it has to be done and, if it has to be done, then it might as well be as pleasurable as possible.
And that is mostly about attitude of mind.
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I might have known I could count on you to see the art in weeding.
Bottoms up indeed![:-)](http://suebeesley.co.uk/wp-includes/images/smilies/simple-smile.png)
Unfortunately my garden (or at least my gardening) hasn't yet got to the 'weeding is art' stage; instead it still hovers around the 'weeding is war' level. (Being away from it for months on end means coming back to a battlefield – or what looks like one after I'm through with it… my allies crushed during my efforts to defeat the bad-guys).
But I genuinely enjoy weeding, and even if crawling round under a hedge for hours leaves me looking like a deranged scarecrow, at least that 'look what I did' feeling feels grand, and knowing that you've got every bit of root you could find it is definitely satisfying! At the moment my fork is my sword, rather than my paintbrush, but hopefully as I mature as a gardener, I will learn to appreciate the more artistic nuances of weeding that you have described
Weeding should not be a 'dirty word', but as James said, itโs about attitude. If you approach it with the right mind-set it becomes more than just a chore, it becomes a pleasure ๐