It’s hard work getting rid of weeds. If you are starting a new bed, you can plant through a weed-suppressing membrane, and in any border a deep mulch will help keep weeds at bay.
In the Netherlands, however, nature-loving gardener Henk Gerritsen advocated a quite different approach – to see the beauty in weeds such as ground elder and to use plants robust enough to live happily alongside it, such as persicarias and grasses. When a weed threatens to engulf its neighbour, you just yank off a handful in passing (‘gardening like a cow’, Henk called it) rather than spending hours trying to dig it up. You can see this approach in action at Waltham Place in Berkshire.
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