Plants Choose Us!

by Lucretia Schanfarber

Plants and gardens are much like old friends. They mature and change from year to year. They move around, taking up residence in another part of the garden. They have their good years and their bad years. Sometimes we lose our favourite ones.

I believe that plants and gardens, like friends, have much to teach us. All plants – not just the cultivated plants that we select and grow in the place of our choosing.

Fortunately, I have come to learn something very important: plants also choose us.

Several years ago, I was inspired and enlightened by reading a locally self-published 24-page booklet titled Weeds – a little guide to the plants that have chosen us. Researched and written by Kristen Vidiluch and Justice Schanfarber, I began to see the “weeds” in my garden in a new light. I started to see them as plants with a purpose.

Chickweed was no longer troublesome. It became an edible wild plant rich in nutrients and utterly delicious when tossed in the salad bowl with my cultivated leafy greens, olive oil and lemon juice. I learned from my little book that chickweed and other so-called weeds are indicator plants. “Chickweed indicates high nitrogen spots in the garden and its unobtrusive sprawling nature provides a lovely living mulch, keeping soil cool and moist,” the booklet informed me.

Dandelion, comfrey, lamb’s quarters, purslane, cleavers and other wild plants are no longer an irritation to me. They are plants that can nourish and heal us; they can condition and remediate our garden soil. Sure, like many other plants, they can get out of hand. But I no longer automatically pull them because they are “weeds.”

They reside peaceably in my garden until I have another plant of my choosing to plant in their place. But there are many I leave in the garden nearly all season. I like discovering the reason they have chosen me.

I often recall the words of a dearly departed gardening friend, Doreen Thompson, when she cheerfully described her glorious gardens: “Mine is a weed-friendly garden.” So is mine.

Here is a lovely essay from Michael Pollan about wild plants.

Lucretia Schanfarber gardens organically on Quadra and Cortes Islands.