Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1912-02-26
WEEDS IN ENGLISH GARDENS.
Poppy, Golden Raswort, Viper's Bug
loss, Bindweed and poverty Grass"


You cannot imagine the phrase applied
To daffodills. If you try to discover
what precisely is meant when a flower
is compared with a weed, to what do
you come? You begin with a sort of
robust earelessness of habit and choice
of soil. a flower which grows any
wherein sun or shade, on chalk or
sand or clay, in dry weather or in wet.
Then there must be certain strength
of color and form; perhaps a nasturti-
am would be a typical growth parti-
cularIy as it does best in dry, poor
soil. The flower. again, must be of a
certain size: if it is too small it no
longer grows like a weed but it is a
weed But when YOU come to separate
flowers from weeds or rather to sep
arate the plants which are allowed in
a garden and those which are not,
where are you to draw the line? Is 1T
the size or form or beauty of color
which decides a particular plant as
garden flower or a weed? Perhaps the
person who is best qualified to judge
flowers to be weeds or otherwise is
one who happens to be making a gar
den for the first time round a newly
built house out of ground which has
hitherto been open field or wood. To
him both weeds and flowers show
themselves in new lights; the weeds of
the gardens he has known before be-
come his flowers, and ii is only when
he must that he destroys @ removes
them For him the word weed takes
on a new meaning; there is definite
point at which a plant ceases to be a
iIoWer-or rather the flower he wants
and becomes Il weed to be dug up,
burned. buried, or otherwise ended al
together.
The real test, of course. is mere con-
Venience. If il is convenient TO the
garden maker that certain plant
shall remain in a certain place. then
whatever 1t may be it is not Il weed.
And the man who is making a garden
round a new house discovers all kinds
of conVenicnces and kindnesses CEered
to him by ordinary garden weeds. par
ticularly when he is attempting To
cope with the habits and customs of
builders Builders in some ways are
DISTINGUISHED from other human be
ings They possess the most amazing
capacity for making a mess that is
known TO man. Naturally they cam
not set about the business of digging
the foundations of a house, and cart
ing round great quantities of sand,
lime. rubble. cement, and everything
else. without causing a certain amount
of disturbance; hut it scents to be
cardinal point in the rules by which
builders go that the various heaps of
these different things shall extend as
far as is humanity possible in every
n. =, hoo, sls
they lie exposed to the weather over
IL or l. acres of ground. that all kinds
of weeds seed themselves and come
into flower and rejoice the heart of the
earden-maker. Some of them take
their stand as garden flowers at once,
and remain garden flowers until they
blow over
The ordinary wild red poppies, for
instance. which belong to every corn
field and roadside have an astonish-
ing habit of arriving in every possible
vacant space or corner. however in
hospitable. Poppy seed is. of course,
very light. and is probably caught up
and blown long distances by the wind
but it presents the oldest problems in
its sudden appearances. You may
pillow up a strip of ground on which
the year before there were no peoples,
and which is not near any place where
peoples usually grow-as, for instance,
in clearing in the middle of a wood
and when June comes round, II the
ground has been left undisturDed, it
will be abIaze with the bursting buds
and silky scarlet petals. There is
nothing more brilliant in all the June
countryside than .field of peoples;
but weeds peoples must remain, for
that very habit of theirs of appearing
from nowhere.
Another weed of amazing persis-
tence is relation OF the garden Dor
age, the common buglosss But bug
loss has no such claims as peoples.
Bugloss has detestable habit of
seeding itself all over a meadow fresh
ly sown down with grass. and requir-
ing to be mown with a scythe before
it seeds again. As it is a strong,
prickly plant and may grow Is inches
or SO high, it is an unwelcome arrival
nor do its small blue flowers strike a
distinct enough note of color TO make
it an ornamental plant on dry bank
or patch of sand. Viper's bugless IS
different plant and makes a me
splash of blue and pink, particularly
if it happens to sow itself next to some
such brilliant yellow flowers as those
CT ragwort. The writer has just been
measuring some Viper's bugloss ana
ragwort growing together in cut
ting made on larch plantation 10
months ago. Last year there were
only a few unimportant flowers there.
This July it is filed with viper's bug
loss and ragwort-the bugloss iour
feet and the ragwort six feet hlgh'
Both plants, of course, nave peeh
drawn up by the trees, but there Is
curious sense of disproportioh OF
walking through the ragwort on q lev
eli with ones eyes. The bugloss must
go down as a weed, of course, because
Of its wind waited down; and the rag
wort. which is a giant relation OF the
ordinary groundsel, must go WIN II.
But ragw0rt has a charm beyond Inc
mere brightness of it's clustered Sei-
low petals and it's graceful sWaylhss
in the wind: it is as sweet-scenteu as
honey. and draws all the small Tor
toiseshell and peacock butterflies With