The End of Weeds

Redefining Beauty. Defining the Point of Life.

Look at my Thistles! Aren’t they lovely?

I have a garden bed at the edge of my yard, inside the fence where my chickens roam. It’s a mound of soil that hides my extensive composting operation. At first, I had strawberries planted there. They lasted two years before they stopped producing and became unruly. Then I had a fancy landscaper come in and plant it with a variety of shrubs and flowers. Then I wrote Love Nature Magic and changed the way I garden. Then this happened…I just stop trying to control the thistles. Honestly, I think it looks rather lovely. (That vine coming out of the arborvitae bushes is Virginia Creeper, which is apparently an important host plant for a caterpillar that birds love to eat. I have lots of birds.)

There are two things I absolutely love about this patch of thistles. First, they are feeding the birds and the bees. Second, they require absolutely no effort on my part. I thought about being embarrassed by them, but then I decided that was a waste of energy.

Plus, I have noticed that since I’ve let up on my “war on weeds” my gardens seem positively ecstatic. Everything is growing larger and more exuberantly than ever before. It’s got me thinking that maybe we’ve been looking at weeds all wrong. Maybe we need weeds. Maybe plants need weeds. Maybe we should stop calling them weeds and just call them plants. Maybe we should embrace the diversity and wisdom of nature and rethink and redefine our idea of beauty.

What is beauty anyway? That is a big question I will not answer in this post. But it’s worth taking a minute to think about. We seek beauty in the total wildness of nature — like hikes in the woods and visiting National Parks. But we also seek it in elaborate cultivated gardens. What if there is something in between? What if the unruliness and seeming chaos between formal and wild is just an important part of existence? What if we have been missing something? What if all the plants are helping each other? What if plants know more than we do? (Spoiler alert: they do.)

When I journeyed to Thistle in Love Nature Magic, their message to me was “Dig deep.” When I started digging deeper into the history of the idea of weeds, I discovered that it arose at the same time as agriculture. Before that, everything was just plants. Some plants were medicine. Some plants were food. Some plants were used for shelter or fuel. Suddenly, people were choosing what they wanted to plant and trying to eradicate those they didn’t want interfering with their plants. (I have read that the origin of agriculture was as much to grow grains for alcohol as it was to grow grains for bread and sustenance, by the way.) The invention of the plow is what propelled man’s war against weeds.

To this day, the number one concern of farmers is weeds. That’s why GMOs and Roundup exist, to eliminate weeds. To most farmers, whether they use chemicals or not, a weed-free field is a symbol of success and pride. It’s also a symbol of our dominion over nature.

I am not a farmer. I am a gardener who grows food. What I find most fascinating since I’ve changed my perspective and allowed all plants to thrive is just how much ALL the plants (and wildlife) are thriving. (The other day from my window I saw a fat groundhog chewing off the tops of some weeds I had left in my garden, which validated my decision to end my tyranny of tidiness and give the weeds some space.)

A honeybee loving on my thistle flowers.

In the first book I ever wrote, Maria Rodale’s Organic Gardening, I described my style as Wild Formal. What that means is the structures and bones of my garden are designed in a formal way that is pleasing to the eye, functional, and harmonious. But on the other side of the structures (the paths, the walls, the patios), I let nature explore and expand. Now, my garden here is 20 years old, which I consider mature. So the trees and bushes have anchored themselves and grown up and out. Many ground covers I’ve planted have spread and thrived. Others have been removed due to serious aggression (I’m looking at you, Bamboo). Some ground covers and trees arrived that I had nothing to do with planting. Things have changed. I’ve added raised beds (formal). I’ve let other things go free (wild). I’ve learned so much since I wrote that book 25 years ago. I’ve even planted a whole new landscape in a whole new place. And most importantly of all, I’m learning to love all the things that once annoyed the hell out of me, including thistles.

What gives me hope is the phenomenal rise of foragers on social media. People like Alexis Nikole aka the @blackforager. And Robin Harford of EatweedsUK where by the way I bought some lovely organic Mugwort T-shirts. I know people love to complain about TikTok and social media, but the success of Alexis Nikole (she’s got over 4.3 MILLION followers!!!) has spawned a whole bunch of other foragers…kind of like thistle seeds spreading.

Thinking about thistles, I felt the urge to re-read Gilgamesh, the epic tale written in 1,700 BCE. Gilgamesh was written when the creator of humans was a woman named Aruru, and sex with the sacred Priestesses was what civilized men (Enkidu) and caused them to become aware and intelligent. It’s a tale of love — both physical and spiritual — between men. It even tells the story of the flood and ark, but instead of Noah, it was a man named Utnapishtim, who receives immortal life for saving humans and nature from the flood. Gilgamesh seeks out Utnapishtim to find out how to be immortal. In the end, he gives Gilgamesh the secret to eternal youth — or rather “the antidote to the fear of death,” but on his way home it is stolen and eaten by a snake, who then sheds his skin.

Utnapishtim has these words for Gilgamesh:* “You have worn yourself out through ceaseless striving, you have filled your muscles with pain and anguish. And what have you achieved but to bring yourself one day nearer to the end of your days? At night the moon travels across the sky, unsleeping, undying. This is the way the world is established…Man’s life is short, at any moment it can be snapped, like a reed in a canebreak. The handsome young man, the lovely young woman—in their prime, death comes and drags them away. Though no one has seen death’s face or heard death’s voice, suddenly, savagely, death destroys us, all of us, old or young. And yet we build houses, make contracts, brothers divide their inheritance, conflicts occur— as though this human life lasted forever. The river rises, flows over its banks and carries us all away, like mayflies floating downstream: they stare at the sun, then all at once there is nothing.

In other words, don’t waste your time worrying about weeds. Enjoy the gifts you have been given, all the plants, all the people, all of nature. Dig deep and know that in your digging you will discover that we are more similar than different, time is relative, and that stories as old as time are still relevant. The secret to eternal youth is the ability to shed your skin, release the old, and embrace the new. But the thistles will outlast all of us.

*from the Stephen Mitchell translation of Gilgamesh, published by Free Press in 2004.