Enough with biodiversity

Should pavement plant life be cultivated or cut back? Old hand Christopher Howse and young gun Guy Kelly ponder a growing problem

There is plenty about modern life to cause celebration and aggravation in equal measure...but it is never safe to make an assumption about how the different generations feel about anything, from vegans to scented candles.

This week Christopher Howse and Guy Kelly debate the place of the weed in civilised society.

‘Overgrown weeds have obstructed twittens in Portslade,’ read a caption in the Brighton and Hove News under a photograph of stinging nettles and a sycamore sapling beside an asphalt path.

None of us likes our twittens obstructed, even if we call them ginnels, snickets or alleys. But on the pavement in my ordinary London side road, plants are growing more floridly than ever. There are more in the cracks between paving stones than in the hanging baskets on the lampposts.

It seems largely a result of councils jettisoning the weedkiller glyphosate, familiar under the trade name Roundup. But at its weed-killing peak my council didn’t just shower the street with herbicides. I have been woken up on a Saturday morning by the scr-r-ritch, scratch, scritch of a hoe.

It was a road sweeper, in charge of a barrow for his sandwiches and waterproof. A hoe seemed to me a blunt tool to eradicate chickweed and groundsel, but I admit that the best that the weed world could offer in resistance was a fringe of oxalis next to the angle of the wall, displaying tiny yellow flowers on the sunniest days.

Now the warfare is not against weeds, but between the people who think of them as unsightly interlopers and those who treasure pavement plant life as reservoirs of biodiversity.

I admit I was egging on a sow thistle that was shooting up in a neighbour’s garden this spring.

It was so vigorous. Then it got pulled up. But in the pavement by autumn sow thistles have run to seed, flopping across the pavement, prey to an interesting leaf-mining insect that leaves meandering tracks on the leaves.

It’s the larvae that mine the tracks. These larvae are breakfast to nematodes and some kind of wasp.

The flies that lay the eggs that hatch into larvae are less than 4mm long, but must be an amuse-gueule for something – house sparrows, perhaps, when they’ve run out of takeaway detritus.

So if the pavements are overrun with sow thistles, we might get sparrows back. As long as the road-sweeper picks the burger wrappers out of the weeds I’ll be happy.

I have held back writing this piece for years, fearing that lawyers for the individuals I am about to name will silence me, or their deranged fans will threaten my loved ones.

But now, I will be cowed no more: I always thought there was something deeply toxic about the relationship between Bill and Ben and their ‘friend’, Little Weed.

There she was, beautiful but imprisoned between concrete slabs, unable to say anything besides her own name, while those two chaotic little terracotta goblins pranced around as if completely above the law. We were led to believe they were equals, friends even.

And ‘Weed’ (we never found out her real name) always put a brave face on things, laughing at their jokes, smiling and nodding. But you could see in her eyes that things were not right. I have heard rumours. When the cameras went off, I believe those Flowerpot Men were bullying her.

Now, to be clear, I have interviewed none of those mentioned in my investigation/hunch, nor have I spoken with anybody who also lived in that suburban garden, such as Slowcoach the tortoise, Dan the potato man or, latterly, Whimsy the spider, Pry the magpie or Whoops the earthworm.

It is just a strong sense I get, watching early episodes back now.

Because really, the plight of all weeds in our country is reflected in that series. Discriminated against for their sheer joie de vivre, they have been demonised and poisoned, cast aside and trampled. Or, as in the Flowerpot Men, made to tolerate demonic earthenware imps hell-bent on chucklesome, consequence-free frolics.

So-called-weeds are now being reappraised by gardeners; we should look back at past portrayals of them.

In a statement, the now retired Bill and Ben, the Flowerpot Men™, William K Flowers and Benjamin Potts Snr, said: ‘Flobberdobberdobberdobber, flobadob, dobber dobber’, which we believe translates to ‘The events described here date back many years, and paint a picture of our working relationship with Ms L Weed that we simply do not recognise.’

Justice for Little Weed, justice for all weeds.