LONDON: Nettles, dandelions, brambles: weeds — once considered a scourge — are taking pride of place at London’s Chelsea Flower Show as gardeners concern themselves more than ever with biodiversity and sustainable development.

Around 145,000 visitors, including King Charles III and Queen Camilla, are expected to attend the five-day annual horticultural extravaganza starting on Tuesday, one of the most popular of its kind worldwide.

In 2022, the gold medal went to a garden celebrating rewilding after the reintroduction of beavers to the south-western England.

This year, no less than one third of the 12 main gardens in competition feature weeds such as nettles, knapweed, dandelions, chickweed or buttercups that generations of gardeners have spent their lives rooting out.

Six-time Chelsea Flower Show gold-medal landscape designer Cleve West has managed to include 19 weed species in his garden for the Centrepoint Association.

West said the garden, constructed around the dilapidated remains of a 19th-century house, was for him the perfect metaphor for the young homeless people the charity cares for, who shouldn’t be written off.

“Weeds play a very significant part in repairing land. When land has been disturbed, weeds are the first things that go. They are pioneer plants that go in and repair the soil,” he said.

Published in Dawn, May 23rd, 2023