Metgrowth (Week 6): Recontextualising weeds.

Here are some photos, taken today, showing the progress of my MetGrow installation on the roof top terrace of 1 Knightsbridge Green, London. I am really pleased with the progress and happy to report that the plant pots seem to be being taken care of by people who work in the building during the week. I spoke to the gardener last week who mentioned that by the end of May we should be thinking about moving the seedlings out of the greenhouse and either into a raised bed or larger pots, to allow them to continue to grow and develop their flowers. A lot of the seedlings seem to be wild grasses and people who have talked to me about the progress of the seedlings seem to think that they are weeds, and not wildflowers at all!
The reason I chose wildflower seeds to embed in my Metro newspapers was for that exact purpose. It seems apt that these plants which, when found growing wild in an urban environment, and considered 'weeds', are nurtured and sheltered in a greenhouse. Greenhouses to me bring to mind the growing and careful monitoring of precious plants which are not used to our British climate, such as Tomatoes and Orchids. To now be carefully growing what these office workers are calling "weeds" adds another element to my installation, as well as another juxtaposition. In the countryside, these flowers grow wild on the road side, but of course, modern city life dictates that these plants are unwanted and disrupt clean smooth urban forms. In fact, when faced with a 'weed' poking from your flagged garden, you would pull it out to restore the design. I enjoy the whole notion of human interference with nature; you see an unsightly plant, you pull it out.
But what is a weed?

Wikipedia defines weeds as such:
A weed in a general sense is a plant that is considered by the user of the term to be a nuisance, and is normally applied to unwanted plants in human-made settings such as gardens, lawns or agricultural areas, but also in parks, woods and other natural areas. More specifically, the term is often used to describe native or nonnative plants that grow and reproduce aggressively.

Generally, a weed is a plant in an undesired place.

Weeds may be unwanted for a number of reasons: they might be unsightly, or crowd out or restrict light to more desirable plants or use limited nutrients from the soil. They can harbour and spread plant pathogens which infect and degrade the quality of crop or horticultural plants. Some weeds are a nuisance because they have thorns or prickles, some have chemicals that cause skin irritation or are hazardous if eaten, or have parts that come off and attach to fur or clothes.

The term weed in its general sense is a subjective one, without any classification value, since

a "weed" is not a weed when growing where it belongs or is wanted.

Indeed, a number of "weeds" have been used in gardens or other cultivated-plant settings. An example is the Corncockle, Agrostemma, which was a common field weed exported from Europe along with wheat, but now sometimes grown as a garden plant.^[2]

Who is to say if nature should be subjected to being wanted/not wanted? It seems that we have an uncanny need to want to control and contain nature in picking and choosing the plants which suit our situation. I want to restore value to these "weeds" in my greenhouse. Hopefully people who have seen their slow and steady growth in the greenhouse and who have noticed their fragility, will realise that they are not weeds at all. It is interesting to note that if any of these plants growing in my greenhouse were found poking from the paving slabs on the roof terrace, the gardener would also most probably pull them out. By putting these plants in a different context, I am giving them a heightened value. I have recontextualised weeds!

To quote the article above, "A weed is not a weed when growing where it belongs or is wanted" and I certainly want these wildflowers to continue to grow in my greenhouse on the roof terrace of JWT!

So, weeds or not, whatever your view, they are wanted in my installation.

To quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist, philosopher and poet:

"What is a weed?
A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered"