Our Great Garden Invasion
The following passage is a blog entry written by a dedicated gardener.
Talk about poor timing. My wife and I took a one-month trip out of the U.S. just at the end of winter. We have a spacious backyard with several large flowerbeds, so we figured we would come back home to a beautiful selection of flowers and plants in full bloom, plus a few weeds, of course. Instead, we returned to find our garden overgrown with exotic species we’d never seen before and most of our best plants dead or dying. Must be weeds, we thought, though not the usual ugly and scary looking types of weeds. We even considered leaving some of our new plants in the ground, and my wife wanted to collect samples of the seeds so we could plant them in the future. Many gardeners don’t seem to mind the new arrivals. But, as we soon discovered, these were not weeds at all but members of several nasty invasive plant species! After reading information about these pests, we knew that saving any seeds was out of the question.
Of course I’d heard about invasive plants before, but I always thought that just meant something like “ugly weeds.” I had never taken time to study the matter. There are many types of invasive species. They have pleasant names like Chinese Wisteria, Bush Honeysuckle, Bamboo, English Ivy, Autumn Olive, and Brazilian Pepper Tree. But what they did to our garden wasn’t pleasant at all. They took over many of the spaces where our favorite plants used to be, blocked sunlight (because they covered up so much of the ground), and even climbed up the sides of our back deck and major portions of our fence.
How did these non-native species invade the garden? They certainly weren’t there the year before. Maybe those nice bird feeders we started leaving out this year were not such a great idea. Birds and other animals often carry the seeds of invasive species from a long way away. They drop a few seeds in the garden in late winter or early spring and the invasion begins. Also, it certainly didn’t help that our neighbor buys plants at a garden center that we now know sells some invasive plants because of popular demand. These things grow fast, and with no one around to spot them or halt their growth, they can ruin a garden in no time (we’re talking weeks).
Now I’m going to talk about the worst thing about invasive plants: removing them! The day after returning from our relaxing vacation, my wife and I spent the entire morning researching how to combat these plants, the entire afternoon at the hardware store and garden center buying the proper weapons, and all of the next day in a major battle. We tried burying the short ones. We coated others with oil, thought about setting some on fire (seemed a bit unsafe) and ended up just pulling most of them out by the roots or digging deep below ground with a shovel. By the end of the day, we had several large trash cans full of once beautiful plants.
As I’ve mentioned, some people actually like these invasive pests because they’re unusual and beautiful. But unless your idea of beauty also involves getting bruises on your knees from digging in the ground all day and splinters from putting up a new fence, I would suggest that you learn to appreciate the many native plants that we have in this country, like buffalo grass, fir trees, and sunflowers.
The following passage is a blog entry written by a dedicated gardener.
Talk about poor timing. My wife and I took a one-month trip out of the U.S. just at the end of winter. We have a spacious backyard with several large flowerbeds, so we figured we would come back home to a beautiful selection of flowers and plants in full bloom, plus a few weeds, of course. Instead, we returned to find our garden overgrown with exotic species we’d never seen before and most of our best plants dead or dying. Must be weeds, we thought, though not the usual ugly and scary looking types of weeds. We even considered leaving some of our new plants in the ground, and my wife wanted to collect samples of the seeds so we could plant them in the future. Many gardeners don’t seem to mind the new arrivals. But, as we soon discovered, these were not weeds at all but members of several nasty invasive plant species! After reading information about these pests, we knew that saving any seeds was out of the question.
Of course I’d heard about invasive plants before, but I always thought that just meant something like “ugly weeds.” I had never taken time to study the matter. There are many types of invasive species. They have pleasant names like Chinese Wisteria, Bush Honeysuckle, Bamboo, English Ivy, Autumn Olive, and Brazilian Pepper Tree. But what they did to our garden wasn’t pleasant at all. They took over many of the spaces where our favorite plants used to be, blocked sunlight (because they covered up so much of the ground), and even climbed up the sides of our back deck and major portions of our fence.
How did these non-native species invade the garden? They certainly weren’t there the year before. Maybe those nice bird feeders we started leaving out this year were not such a great idea. Birds and other animals often carry the seeds of invasive species from a long way away. They drop a few seeds in the garden in late winter or early spring and the invasion begins. Also, it certainly didn’t help that our neighbor buys plants at a garden center that we now know sells some invasive plants because of popular demand. These things grow fast, and with no one around to spot them or halt their growth, they can ruin a garden in no time (we’re talking weeks).
Now I’m going to talk about the worst thing about invasive plants: removing them! The day after returning from our relaxing vacation, my wife and I spent the entire morning researching how to combat these plants, the entire afternoon at the hardware store and garden center buying the proper weapons, and all of the next day in a major battle. We tried burying the short ones. We coated others with oil, thought about setting some on fire (seemed a bit unsafe) and ended up just pulling most of them out by the roots or digging deep below ground with a shovel. By the end of the day, we had several large trash cans full of once beautiful plants.
As I’ve mentioned, some people actually like these invasive pests because they’re unusual and beautiful. But unless your idea of beauty also involves getting bruises on your knees from digging in the ground all day and splinters from putting up a new fence, I would suggest that you learn to appreciate the many native plants that we have in this country, like buffalo grass, fir trees, and sunflowers.
© Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, http://www.ode.state.or.us/wma/teachlearn/commoncore/ela.06.draft.pt.2.04.143-v1.pdf
