Anja Murray: Don't reject the generosity of wild self-sown flowering plants
Ragwort, bramble flowers, ox eye daisy, thistle, cow parsley, teasel... "These are generous plants that offer a lifeline to bees and butterflies, at least as deserving of space as anything we might intentionally plant or grow" — Anja Murray
Maintaining a garden free of 'weeds' is never easy. I’ve been taking a different approach this year, and giving some self-sown weeds the freedom to grow as they please. There’s a small vegetable patch, about the size of a child’s bed, that I’ve let fill up with self-seeded ragwort, which by now have reached more than a metre in height. Their bright yellow flowers are abundant and richly pigmented, as attractive as any intentionally-planted, nursery-bought flowering plant. If I had just arrived here from some faraway culture, one unfamiliar with the native flora and fauna and thus untainted by the negative cultural associations we have for ragwort, I would be impressed at how well this beautiful plant looks. I might even consider it a star of the garden’s flower border.
The reason I decided to leave the ragwort grow this year is that I had become aware of the value of ragwort for butterflies, moths, wild bumblebees, solitary bees and hoverflies. Their frequenting the flowers now comes as no surprise, but after years of pulling up ragwort seedlings, I hadn’t expected to suddenly find it looking so lovely too.
