PLANTS & RIDICULOUSNESS: IT'S ONLY A WEED IF YOU CALL IT THAT.....

Thursday, June 27, 2013

IT'S ONLY A WEED IF YOU CALL IT THAT.....

People are weird..... or, to be more specific, gardener's are weird people. We demand certain ellusive qualities of plants, that, when you think about it, would make it completly impossible for the them to persist and thrive in any type of natural setting outside of a highly manicured garden. Vigourous, but not so vigorous that the plant ever exceeds some set of contrived dimensions..... flowers continuously, but never sets enough seed to become a nuisance, evergreen, but non-toxic, and (overall) benign in almost every way imaginable.... in a word, plastic. And to find these plants we seem to look everywhere but our own backyards. After all why would you ever look for a plant that does well in your area.... in your area? Completely counter-intuitive I know (this is me being sarcastic).

Overtime I've come to realize that the most compelling places and plants, are those that happen without much input from people, or any input at all. And these accidental "designs" are usually composed of plants that posses nearly all the opposite qualities that I listed previously. Overly vigorous, prolific reseeders, rambling and wide spreading, and sometimes toxic, in a word WEEDS. I've come to hate the word, mainly because it can be used by any joe-shmoe to negatively paint an undeserving plant, usually based on some tempermental whim. This isn't to say that there aren't plants that don't deserve the label, especially when they're exotics that invade endemic habitats. However, when these plants only thrive in places that are a direct result of human disturbance, happy to fill the gap until natives can re-establish, to me, these plants are anything but weeds. Usually beautiful, adaptable, and (one of the qualities that I appreciate most), persistent. Why so many of these plants continue to go untilized by designers is far more than my little mind can comprehend. Over the past few weeks I have taken pictures of these ignored and underappreciated plants on my way to work. A route that in many ways is no different than most peoples, but still has a plethra of wonderful happy accidental spaces, and amazing plants.