“It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they are. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think Mr. Frodo I do understand, I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. They kept going because they were holding onto something.”
“What are we holding onto Sam?”
“That there’s some good in this world Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”
— Sam’s speech at the end of The Two Towers.
If I have even just a little sense,
I will walk on the main road and my only fear will be of straying from it.
Keeping to the main road is easy,
But people love to be sidetracked.
When the court is arrayed in splendor,
The fields are full of weeds,
And the granaries are bare.
Some wear gorgeous clothes,
Carry sharp swords,
And indulge themselves with food and drink;
They have more possessions than they can use.
They are robber barons.
This is certainly not the way of Tao.
Tao Te Ching, 53
The first step for establishing a successful native garden is to get rid of weeds. While this is analogous to traditional gardening practices, it differs in that weeds, or unwanted/ harmful plants, will be defined a bit more broadly than is usual.
The definition of weeds used here will be all plants whose maintenance interferes with maintaining healthy soil conditions for natives. These will include:
a) Plants that require a lot of water and nutrients for quick growth, and thus are very competitive with native plants for these resources,
b) Plants that typically grow fast and that can crowd out the native plants, which take longer to develop,
c) Plants that do not connect or do not contribute to the mycorrhizal grid, and thus compete for resources without giving anything back to the community, and
d) Plants whose maintenance adversely affects the nature of the soil from the point of view of what benefits the fungal network, and thus the plant community in the long run.
Thus, from the standpoint of a native garden, the term weed will not only include traditional weeds, but also annual exotic garden plants, many perennial exotics, and lawns, since the maintenance of these alien species moves the nature of the soil away from supporting the fungal species that natives require. In short, the soil conditions which support imported, water-loving garden plants can inhibit the growth of a mycorrhizal fungal network.
2 Responses
I have often said that if one is preparing to landscape the grounds of one’s house (of course, builders hate green growing things so your house is planted in bare earth), go into the native woods and meadows, and put nothing on your property you don’t see growing there.
Of course, if I did that, my homeowner’s association would fine me, lien me, sue me, and they’d win.
We are required to have a St. Augustine grass lawn. This grass requires intensive care including copious watering (in an era of water shortages), copious feeding (making runoff to pollute natural water), and copious use of poisons to keep out “weeds” and “pests” (like chinch bugs, etc.). Isn’t it funny that our culture loves plants whose first instinct is to die?
James Taylor’s brother Livingston had a song in which he sang, “There are flowers in my garden/pretty ones all in a row/But my favorites are the weeds/they don’t know where to grow but they know enough to grow.”
Our “approved” plants don’t know enough to grow.
I often tell people who admire my garden that I just grow pretty weeds. ;^)
I still have far too much lawn, though, partly for the dogs in the back yard and partly for social conventions and out of laziness in the front. It is actually a lot of effort to tear the damn things up to plant other stuff.
The back bank is largely native plants, and they are interspersed throughout my yard. A lot of the yard is also becoming edible plants, which is nice.
There is so much in our society, and in ourselves, that has forgotten how to move with nature. As we continue to pay the price for this, I hope we start to remember and learn again.