"My weeds are doing quite nicely" -
this is a quote by the great gardener and writer Christopher Lloyd, whose garden at Great Dixter I am going to visit later this month enroute to London , where I will help clear out college dorm rooms ... The quote is taken from his witty and intelligent book "Gardening Diaries" and contains a collection of his weekly columns on gardening from 1963 onwards until his death in 2007.
Most people remove all growth that does not belong in a planting. They prefer clean, empty bare soil between plants or the monoculture of lawn grasses. For my taste, I don't like to see bare earth, it looks infertile and unhealthy. If I find something growing unexpectedly, I let it grow until I know what it is before I decide to tear it out. This way, I have found many unexpected treasures: an agapanthus under a pine, a martagon lily next to the parking lot, cyclamen in the lawn, Euphorbia characias under the cedar tree. The garden is greatly enhanced by plants that choose their own space in unexpected places.
This rule of removing only well-known weeds is especially important for new helping hands, as I have learnt the hard way many years ago when I saw a gardener tearing at some fresh acanthus leaves in frustration ... When I inquired what the purpose of his efforts was, he claimed he had been trying to eradicate this particularly resilient dandelion but it would come up again and again..... How glad I was!
It seems that this treatment has only made my acanthus stronger. It still grows in that corner. So it is a good rule to stick to known devils and eradicate those. Let everything else grow to a reasonable size to see whether it might be wanted, before you tear it out. Most times it won't be needed to be removed. This rule also means that you need an accomplished gardener as help, who knows his plants in all stages of growth. These gardening artists are very very hard to come by; good gardeners are probably a rarer species than good doctors, who are rare indeed.
Not a place where you would expect an Agapanthus. This self-sown one must have been growing under the pine for quite some time. We only detected it when it was in flower and they don't usually flower in their first year.
The beauty of weeds in the lawn is another contentious issue. In fact, "Lawn pride" is a term that Christopher Lloyd must have coined. I had never heard it before. He had dogs roaming freely in his garden, so taking pride in the green turf was bound to fail. But maybe this is only the "Neid der Besitzlosen" - the grudge of the have-nots . Occasionally I come across gardens with perfect soft springy lawns - a great treat for tired feet and joints. My lawn is hardly a lawn. It is a small green patch between borders and trees, the central piece of a small city garden that is walked on and that we have to cross to get to the garden shed and the garage. Here we have held garden parties and picnics, children used to play football on it and put up tents to camp overnight. And when I found the first cyclamen that had escaped from under the cedar tree, I admired their entrepreneurship to occupy and colonize new ground. Rather than moving these little seedlings back to where they belonged, I let them invade and stay. Thus, we have a great variety of tiny species that are able to escape the mower because their leaves and flowers are low on the ground. In spring my lawn is a gathering of these tiny folks, and we take great care to do the first mowings around these colourful patches, using a small hand mower. The motto is "live and let live" and whatever likes my lawn is usually allowed in.
Gänseblümchen (Bellis perennis)
this is a quote by the great gardener and writer Christopher Lloyd, whose garden at Great Dixter I am going to visit later this month enroute to London , where I will help clear out college dorm rooms ... The quote is taken from his witty and intelligent book "Gardening Diaries" and contains a collection of his weekly columns on gardening from 1963 onwards until his death in 2007.
Most people remove all growth that does not belong in a planting. They prefer clean, empty bare soil between plants or the monoculture of lawn grasses. For my taste, I don't like to see bare earth, it looks infertile and unhealthy. If I find something growing unexpectedly, I let it grow until I know what it is before I decide to tear it out. This way, I have found many unexpected treasures: an agapanthus under a pine, a martagon lily next to the parking lot, cyclamen in the lawn, Euphorbia characias under the cedar tree. The garden is greatly enhanced by plants that choose their own space in unexpected places.
This rule of removing only well-known weeds is especially important for new helping hands, as I have learnt the hard way many years ago when I saw a gardener tearing at some fresh acanthus leaves in frustration ... When I inquired what the purpose of his efforts was, he claimed he had been trying to eradicate this particularly resilient dandelion but it would come up again and again..... How glad I was!
It seems that this treatment has only made my acanthus stronger. It still grows in that corner. So it is a good rule to stick to known devils and eradicate those. Let everything else grow to a reasonable size to see whether it might be wanted, before you tear it out. Most times it won't be needed to be removed. This rule also means that you need an accomplished gardener as help, who knows his plants in all stages of growth. These gardening artists are very very hard to come by; good gardeners are probably a rarer species than good doctors, who are rare indeed.
Not a place where you would expect an Agapanthus. This self-sown one must have been growing under the pine for quite some time. We only detected it when it was in flower and they don't usually flower in their first year.
Still, it can be found by a bumblebee.
Löwenzahn (Taraxacum officinale or Leontodon taraxacum)
Gamander (Teucrium)
Butterblume (Ranunculus repens)
Viola
Ajuga
I am looking forward to seeing his garden this month, bringing the car from the continent to be able to load plants and other gardening goodies, which I have not done for the past forty years or so. I will come to London on the day after the "Brexit"-vote. Who knows what they will decide? The wrong decision might feel like drifting away from the Continent, away into some North Atlantic cold pale mist, stretching the Channel Tunnel to infinity like an elastic ever thinning rubber band and breaking all links to Europe to the point of no-return - .. but I can always take the ferry back :)! 
clover
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