Borderlands: know your enemy

After years of being deep within the 'land of the sick' I find myself at the border of the 'land of the well'. I venture in and am thrown back out, but I go again and again. I feel like an illegal masquerading as legitimate but in true ' fake it till you make it style' I can feel the change bit by bit. Maybe one day I'll get my Green card.

Borders in gardens at first seem to be flower beds, places for plants but the etymology of the word points toward other origins. Borders are along boundaries, narrow strips, edges; increasingly policed they are central to identity, separating us from them. Garden worthy plants are a distinct group, they are often validated or legitimised  by authority such as the RHS with its AGM (award of garden merit). They too separate the classes and provide rungs in the ladder for the aspirational gardener to climb ever closer to social acceptance.

Borders are there to display the owners taste, to be admired, mostly from within but to allow a glimpse to those on the other side of the border, outsiders. Railway tracks have traditionally made excellent boundaries.

Perhaps what is most interesting about Borders is not what they include but what they exclude; namely Weeds. That weeds are a plant in the wrong place is a truism but misses the point; weeds are them, by virtue of the collective name individuality is lost and they be come a problem to be dealt with, like vermin or the poor etc. Weeds are poisoned and pulled, burned and slashed with a zealous fervour that is evangelical. The only thing worse than a weed in your border is one in your neighbours; eying up the opportunities for rape, pillage and general despoilment of your gentle community.

I have the advantage of working on a large scale, thousands of m2 of herbaceous plantings in 10 acres or so; weeds are free, they grow easily and make bio-mass; weeds are my friends and saviours and when finally in the right place and restrained by the presence of others, useful members of the community. Weeds are the boistrous adolescents, treat them right and they are great fun.

I have Figwort growing up through Hebe, the dull red flowers hovering only inches above the gluacous shrub on vertical stalks 3 foot tall like exotic winged insects. The Hawkweed covers a bank to the main lawn and flowering orange transforms it and illuminates a dull corner. Horseshoe vetch and Birdsfoot trefoil create a bright understory to sparse grass. Sanicle grows as a mat in dry shade and as a unique umbillifer in better corners.

All of these are Arcadian themes, we might think we know our enemy but maybe it is just a stranger from across the tracks.