THE POTENTIAL OF WEEDS

My fall gardening catalog arrived today, and I flipped through the pages with great anticipation. Crab grass? No. Chickweed? No. Flower-less briar? No. Aggressive trailing vines with no other purpose than to grow everywhere? No.

Unfortunately, it seems that, once again, the gardening catalogs have overlooked the enormous landscape potential that is the common weed.

I don't understand the problem, really. Weeds take no effort. They don't need to be watered. They thrive on soil lacking in nutrients. You don't even have to worry about mulch! They could be the solution to the often-heard complaint that there is not enough time for the simple pleasure of gardening.

Take, for example, the lovely invasive weed I "grow" along the back of my yard. Called "Japanese Knotweed," it could truly be considered a gardener's best friend. Once in vogue as an ornamental grass, Japanese Knotweed grew out of favor when it became apparent that its growing habit was to overtake everything--including native plants, small animals, and a couple of houses.

This tall, bamboo-like plant grows to be anywhere from six to eight feet high, depending on what view you don't want it to obstruct. As with most plants, a good trimming makes them grow even more fervently. They're dark green in color, and bloom in the fall with white, spiny flowers that last about a day. They make a great privacy screen, or natural fencing, and could, no doubt, replace the need for shrubs, hedges, and groundcover.

A bonus of the Japanese Knotweed, besides the obvious, is that the tall stalks of this plant never, and I mean never, decompose. Year after year, these woody stalks grow, die off, turn brown and then fall to the ground, creating a lovely carpet of brown sticks. And you know, you can never have enough brown sticks in your garden.

Its root ball, weighing anywhere from 20 to 40 pounds, digs in deep--making it next to impossible to remove. And who would want to? If you let these plants grow, they'll propagate like rabbits, shooting out lots and lots of baby plants that will soon take root with their own 20-40 pound root balls.

As I like to say, who needs grass and pretty flowers when you've got Japanese Knotweed?

OK, seriously? I curse the Japanese Knotweed. I curse it in the winter when the brown sticks stand defiant against all forces--wind, snow, ice, noreasters. I curse it in the spring, when I stand eyeball deep in it, making my annual attempt to mutilate them enough so I can haul at least one root ball out of the ground and dump it in the trash. I curse it in the summer as it grows so high I can no longer see the marsh and pond out back.

And then...just the other day...I was standing in the yard, vexing the Knotweed with words not fit for print, when I saw them. Two beautiful and bright Monarch butterflies, dancing around in the sky and landing, delicately, on the now-flowering Japanese Knotweed. Looking around, I noticed more of them...six to count. Communing with the bumble bees and humming birds...all of them having this little party in my backyard, in my Japanese Knotweed!

And to that, in not so subtle cloud/silver lining, lemons/lemonade undertones, I say:

"Who knew I was growing a butterfly garden?"