The Problem with "It Popped Up in My Yard..."

When I began my new landscape, I recognized that everything that currently existed was either non-native or a plant I very likely did not want. After all, my yard had been part of this suburban desert for decades and nothing in the original flora of this site had remained intact. My turf grass was infested with common lawn weeds and their seed was lying thick in the subsurface soil, waiting for a disturbance of some kind to release them.  I had a single shade tree - an invasive camphor (Cinnamomum camphora) and a couple of foundation hedges - also comprised of invasive and lifeless non-natives. There were no bees or butterflies here and very few songbirds.

It is totally unrealistic in a setting such as mine to believe that benign neglect will produce anything other than a patch of weeds. The term "weed" is so often misused in the public lexicon as something derogatory, but it shouldn't be used that way. A weed is a weed, however - native or not. They are plants waiting patiently in the seed bank for a disturbance and when released, they quickly take over any bare ground they find. Weeds can have value, depending on the species, but they are not plants native to stable plant communities and they almost never play well with those that are.

My goal was to create a plant community - plants that work well together and form some degree of stability over time. That can't be accomplished with weeds unless one is satisfied with a permanent patch of them. When I started to scrape off the layers of turf in my planting area, I knew that I would be confronted by weeds almost immediately. It was a given and I was correct. Nothing in that frame was a species I intended to purposely add and none were welcome. That included native and non-native weeds.

As I peruse native-plant gardening sites, I often find folks asking if the plant that just "popped" out of their landscape is native or not... I hate that question as I think it's totally immaterial to the real question at hand, which should be: "What is the ecological value, if any, of this plant that just appeared?" The nativity of the plant is irrelevant and it is very unlikely that any plant popping out of a previously developed lot with turf grass is anything of real value. In all my years of native plant landscaping, the only native that I've kept that arrived this way was corky-stem passionvine (Passiflora suberosa). I don't think I've lived anywhere in Florida where this plant didn't already occur and then multiply over time. 

Plants that "pop up" are not the plants I've ever purposely planted in a former turf grass landscape and I've certainly done my best to eliminate all those that have appeared on their own since beginning my landscape here. My plan does not include them - native or not. The serendipitous landscape approach, keeping weeds that are native and weeding out the others, simply creates a patch of native weeds. A patch of weeds may have more ecological benefit than a patch of closely manicured turf, but it will always fall far short of what it actually could do if the plants used were selected carefully and with an ecological purpose in mind. As my little patch of suburbia takes shape and creates an area of life, this simple fact becomes ever more clear. It takes time, a plan, and some patience to create a living landscape and that time is much better spent than the time savings of benign neglect.