Wild about Weeds: Garden Design with Rebel Plants by Jack Wallington (review)

The home gardener and commercial landscaper alike are frequently in an adversarial relationship with weeds. Weeds can confound the best landscape designs and surprise the most vigilant gardener. Jack Wallington challenges us to re-think this relationship in his book Wild about Weeds: Garden Design with Rebel Plants. Wallington takes the age-old gardener's lament, "I wish my flowers grew as well as these weeds," and turns it on its head. The book carefully lays out a philosophical and practical rationale for thoughtfully incorporating weedy plants into one's garden design. As generalists, weeds may require less site preparation or soil amendments. The tendency of weeds to spread may be channeled into a dynamic gardening element that morphs into something different over time. Wallington's approach is both playful and mindful. He stresses caution against planting potential invaders while actively encouraging daring combinations of weeds in his "rebel designs."

Aiming for a global audience, the book highlights a variety of international weeds and includes many species already in cultivation. Native and naturalized ranges are identified along with soil and light preferences, flowering times, and color. Each plant is rated with respect to the level of "care" needed to establish it, the "effort" to keep it in check, and the potential for it to run amuck (that is, "rebelliousness"). For the North American native plant gardener, the species write-ups may be more useful for inspiration than actual inclusion in one's designs. Most of the taxa listed would not be acceptable under a strict native plant ethos, but the book provides encouragement to look at native weeds in one's landscape for incorporation into plantings. Interviews with gardeners, designers, and an invasive plant specialist are interspersed between sections of recommended weeds for a range of garden conditions. Rather than a desk reference for which weeds to plant, the book may serve better as a blueprint to inspire the native plant gardener to re-evaluate the wilder components of one's landscape and harness the vigor of native weeds as novel elements in a future landscape design.