Build Your Own Butterfly Garden: Tending or Weeding Your Garden?
- Amy Bright
- Apr 1
- 2 min read
Are you tending or weeding your garden?
When I first started gardening, I wanted to weed EVERYTHING.
Everything in the yard need to be shorn or displaced except for the grass or the exact flowers that I was planting.
I hated the look of an unkempt yard, and was almost sterile in my approach to what I thought was a beautiful lawn.
This was in complete contrast to my mom, a certified Master Gardener with experience in running a flower shop, gardens, and herbalism.
"It's not a weed; it's a _______________," she would exclaim whenever I tried to pull anything (it seemed), and then she would give a genuine lecture on the nature, history, and medicinal purpose of the offending plant.
It so happened that all plants everywhere seemed to have some purpose and needed to stay free of my prying hands and hoe.
I was frustrated; she was frustrated; the plants were happy (unless I sneaked a pull).
Then I started looking at my gardens not as a rectangular bed where I planted seeds and forgot about them.
I began viewing the garden as a place where pollinators could flourish as over-development overtook our small town and green places were replaced with concrete and poorly-built multi-family homes.
As I researched the flowers I needed to bring in the bees and butterflies, I started realizing that gasp my mother was, in fact, correct.
Almost every plant I tried to exterminate (sans herbicides) was some sort of a habitat or host for a caterpillar or butterfly. The rest fix nitrogen in the soil and help break up the clay of our area.
Now, my approach to the land is more tending rather than weeding.
Some plants have to go to make room for those I'm growing, but others can grow to a reasonable height or depth as long as they're kept in check.
I keep runners out of the garden, but I allow those "weeds" to remain in untended areas to fix nitrogen and to be mowed into the space later or used as green compost.
Simultaneously, I'm spreading SO MANY wildflower seeds so that some may take root and provide a more colorful lawn.
Grass clumps are still hewn with abandon, but that's to make room for zinnias and clover.
Unless you live in an HOA, I encourage you to look for ways you can tend nature rather than root it out!
Meet the Author
Amy Bright--mother, dancer, leather worker, sword novice, theatre director, quest mistress, gardener, and lover of God's magnificent creation.
I'm an English professor at Anderson University and sometimes read C.S. Lewis and Tolkien into the wee sma'.
I encourage you to explore the use of "thorn" as a letter.
You may have hit the nail on the head why my gardens are never successful. I'm definitely a weeder not a tender. I think I need to change my approach.
I love the phrase you used: Now, my approach to the land is more tending rather than weeding. Somethings are ok to stay and thrive even if we do not want/expect them to be there. While I was never a garden person per say, growing up my parents would grow tomatoes (today, I would say my father was obsessive about it).
Thanks for sharing!
My mother had multiple gardens—vegetables, strawberries, grapes, and flowers—without issue from our HOA. I miss having a garden, though I never inherited her green thumb. Tomato worms always freaked me out! Your zinnia is gorgeous—I’d love to see more of your garden photos!