Read More

By August, my early season enthusiasm for a tidy garden has waned. Leafy greens have bolted and lean rangily against each other. Vetch curls up potato stems and launches its seeds in tiny explosions. Lemon balm is everywhere. Grasses at the edge of the lawn are tawny and arching, and I pick a couple of blackberries whenever I walk past our retaining wall. In short, I have given up on appearances. It feels pretty good. If you have the same late-summer lassitude, and especially if you’re guilty about the yard having gotten out of hand, the following books can help you learn how to stop worrying and love your weeds. 

I first got interested in weeds because I love eating new foods. Many, if not most, of our common weeds have traveled and spread because they are pretty good snacks, herbs, or medicines. The Front Yard Forager by Melany Vorass Herrera offers a Seattle-local exploration of how to safely and deliciously meet your botanical neighbors.  Diego Bonetto’s Eat Weeds is, alternatively, the opposite of local. Coming out of Australia, it is a window into the global nature of ways human cultures define and engage with weeds alongside useful recipes. If you’re curious about uses for weedy plants besides dinner, consider Papermaking with Garden Plants & Common Weeds by Helen Hiebert for an alternative option (I have made paper with weeds: It’s messy, fun, and sometimes has shockingly beautiful results). 

If you want something to read while sipping your dandelion root coffee, or if you’re less hands-on inclined, there are a number of natural histories of weeds available in our catalogue. Weeds: In Defense of Nature’s Most Unloved Plants by Richard Mabey, an English naturalist, is a good one for fans of David Attenborough. Alternatively, Charles B. Heisler, an ethnobotanist most remembered for his work studying the domestication of sunflowers, gives a plainspoken, midwestern account in Weeds in My Garden. If you want peak coastal grandma vibes, look to My Weeds: A Gardener’s Botany by Sara Bonnett Stein for a dignified but fun mix of well-researched natural history and personal narrative surrounding Stein’s trials, tribulations, and ultimate acceptance of the weeds that inevitably derail her gardening plans. 

Nature Underfoot by John Hainze — entomologist and former, repentant pesticide-developer — writes with heart about the small, sometimes annoying plants and insects we share our lives with. It’s a particularly good choice if you’re interested in learning more about the ethics of pest management. Lives of Weeds by John Cardina is organized into eight profiles of weeds that have evolved from unremarkable plant species in the wild to classifiably noxious weeds in their coevolution with human agriculture, with a similar goal of taking stock of how human actions can have unintended consequences. Love, Nature, Magic by Maria Rodale has much the same project, but from a very different angle. Rodale is of the Rodale Institute, one of the oldest US organizations dedicated to researching sustainable agriculture, and there is a lot about her family and their work as well as memoir woven into this strange little book. In it, Rodale seeks wisdom directly from the weeds, pesky animals, and others inhabiting her Pennsylvania woods through a practice of shamanic journeying. I found its unusual perspectives and compassion delightful and recommend it to anyone with a high tolerance for woo. 

Maybe, like me, you’re now considering how next year’s gardening project can be having more and better weeds. Into the Weeds by Tama Matsuoka Wong, a forager and gardener based in New Jersey, invites readers to work with rather than against weedy volunteers and help cultivate the most useful among them alongside some recipes, how-tos, and ID help. Jack Wallington is based at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and his Wild About Weeds might suit anyone who daydreams about a slightly more formal garden filled with weedy friends.  

Finally, Daniel Murphy’s Common Backyard Weeds of the Pacific Northwest, geared towards beginners and amateur enthusiasts, helps readers identify 157 regional weeds. It is a new release, on order for our library, and available to put on hold. 

~posted by Kate K.