The hard copy, not for Guardian readers………

I had this piece published in the Telegraph on the 15th of July – but only subscribers could see it. So here I have turned it into a post.

How many of us love the outdoor housework known as weeding? Is this why we turn eagerly to the gardening pages every week – to discover what boring chores we should be tackling?  Unfortunately, for many garden housework haters like myself, our efforts, or lack of, may be on very public display (unlike the state of our bathrooms, for example). The gardens to which we are all exposed in magazines, RHS shows and on television don’t help. These tend to be full of a large variety of plants and no weeds. Everybody knows that you must have no weeds. They are worse than the cobwebs that decorate the ceilings indoors.

So, what to do about weeds? Well, start by abandoning the notion that gardens should comprise a random collection of impulse buys. This starts out as a messy look, which weeds make even messier. Then, contemplate your weeds. While everyone knows that weeds are plants in the wrong place, no one knows where the right place is, apart from the compost heap. But the right place may actually be to leave them in the garden. Weeds can be useful and even fashionable. The wild, “natural” look is on trend: neatly edged borders are so last century. So, let’s reappraise the wonders you possess.  If you can abandon the idea that you should get rid of weeds, you may learn what they can positively contribute.

Wild, natural look at Veddw

Ground elder

This is an interesting case – universally loathed, apart from by the people who eat it, perhaps. (I am convinced that if it were worth eating, Tesco would stock it.) Ground elder, a perennial, has a good leaf, a flower as good as the over-hyped annual Ammi majus (it also lasts longer in water), and a wonderful spreading inclination. What could look cooler than some small, clipped trees in a sea of ground elder? (There is even a variegated kind.)

You could enjoy a garden covered in it if you got rid of your impulse buys. A few ferns and that other attractive weed, the buttercup, might be a low-maintenance addition. I have just such a patch myself. Grass got in among the ground elder, thereby turning itself into a weed, so I sprayed it with a little glyphosate. We then watched anxiously for the return of the ground elder. It returned, happily, with extra buttercups – how sweet is that?  The trick to keeping all this looking good is to strim it (or shear, depending on the availability of tools and the size of the plot) all to the ground after flowering. Leave the debris where it falls – the plants love it and return through it looking fresh in no time.

Pots with ground elder and butter cups with added ferns.

Buttercups and daisies

The meadow and the creeping kind of buttercup, with tenacious roots, add a splash of early summer yellow sprinkled among garden flowers – and thereby offer a unity too often missing in our borders. Just get your colour scheme right; for example, drifts of buttercups look wonderful with early blue hardy geraniums. If you can get ox-eye daisy seeding madly in there too, all the better. Ordinary daisies can turn a lawn into pure nostalgia and are an invitation to distract children from smart phone to daisy chain – they also make a sweet edge to a meadow if you cut the grass shorter round the edges.

Yes, this is the lawn at Veddw…

Rosebay willowherb

Another favourite of mine. I have this running rampant with a vigorous scarlet crocosmia, otherwise known as montbretia (also commonly regarded as a weed) and they look wonderful together in late summer with an unexpected addition of a pale pink mallow, which I believe is also a weed. An unlikely mix of colour, but it sings. ­Curiously, the willowherb enhances almost every other colour it settles by. The seed heads are also very beautiful, although if you wish to restrict the bounty you may do well to strim the lot when the flowers start to go over.

Please don’t get into the ragwort thing – no-one is making hay for animal feed round here.

Bindweed and ivy

Bindweed has beautiful flowers while also being a rampant, irremovable strangler of lesser plants. It will deal with your impulse buys in no time. I know of someone who tried to grow bindweed over arches. They failed. The trick might be to add an arch where the bindweed is already situated. Ivy keeps our house walls warm and dry. We clip it once a year like a hedge and keep it out of the gutters and windows. In the countryside the effect is much better than a stark white house. If used as a garden carpet, it has the virtue of immunity to glyphosate, making easy weeding of unwanted grass.

Comes with wildlife of its own..

Other weeds to cherish

I love a thistle, especially the Scotch thistle. Such a dramatic plant, cheekily topped off with a purple crew cut. And are foxgloves, valerian, cow parsley, ferns and alchemilla weeds, wild flowers or garden plants? It’s time to stop the name-calling and begin to embrace diversity. Too many useful plants are dismissed by garden writers as “thugs”. Those are the plants you need to search out if you want an easy garden life. If you’ve been rather too zealous and can’t find any weeds in your own plot, ask your neighbours – they are bound to have some bits they’d be happy to part with.

Valerian – can’t possibly be a weed.

Two ways to properly  get rid of weeds

Glyphosate (still sold in the form of Roundup) is the most reliable weedkiller, and has the great benefit of not disturbing the soil and inviting more weeds. However, glyphosate is like Brexit, dividing the nation in bitter dispute. And its days on garden centre shelves may be numbered following the EU vote to ban it. You may also note the World Health Organisation categorisation of it as “possibly carcinogenic” – along with baby oil, grapefruit juice, aloe vera, cinnamon and coconut oil.  

Mulching is indispensable. If you have a well-stocked border you can cut it down in the winter and leave the debris, which will feed the soil and help to prevent weeds from self-seeding. You may also use wood chippings from your local tree surgeon, although this good advice has resulted in my no longer being able to obtain any because people are keeping it for themselves. It’s a myth that wood chips deplete nitrogen from your soil, by the way.

Totally horrid weeds to avoid

Giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum) is beautiful but awful. If you get the sap on your skin and are exposed to sunlight you will get a horrible, painful rash, and it can cause blindness if it gets into your eyes. Like a huge cow parsley, easily 10ft tall. It is not the same as common hogweed (Heracleum sphondylium), which some people love (it’s quite pretty) and some people eat.  If in doubt, do your research and be clear about the difference; doubt could leave you scared of every hogweed-like plant you encounter.

Cleavers (Galium aparine), which has many common names (like sticky willy), is the one I hate. It’s a scrambler that leaves a trail of vegetation across your beautiful flowers and spoils the look – this is also how bindweed lets itself down. I know a dog that eats cleavers, but he never eats half enough.

Cleavers, full of threatening seed heads…

Hug a weed today

Evaluate plants rather than label them as weeds, and see if they have anything to offer. Weeds are usually “wild flowers” after all. ​

Don’t imagine you’ll ever get rid of all weeds, so think more about how you can co-exist.

Grow other tough and robust plants that will compete happily with your weeds.

Anne Xxxx

The Deckchair Gardener: An Improper Gardening Manual by Anne Wareham (Michael O’Mara, £8.99). Signed copies available fro Anne if you visit Veddw.