LIVING IN A WEEDY FUTURE - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 91

attitudes towards native or non-native plants; others cross-cut them. In practice,
weed managers of all sorts separate ideas of belonging (what plants are) from
behaviour (what plants do). We attend to invasive plants - in our gardens, in our
crops - and leave the ones that behave themselves alone.
This chapter uses the terminology of weed rather than invasive , as it resonated
more strongly with the study participants, and emerged during our interview
conversations. Most participants were much more likely to talk about weeds in terms
of their invasive qualities than their nativeness per se . Indeed, for them, a weed is in
practice a plant that invades. This is a common-sense understanding borne out of
the labour of maintaining a garden, or frustration at not having the time or
inclination to do so. Thus Angus talked of weeds as plants that 'run over everything
else'. For Jo, an active participant in bush regeneration projects, there was a strong
distinction between good and bad exotic plants, separate to their nativeness. The
bad ones, including Madeira vine ( Anredera cordifolia ) and lantana ( Lantana camara ),
are invasive in the bush, while those that sat quietly in the domestic space of her
garden (specimen conifers, port wine magnolia, daffodils) are very welcome despite
being exotic. Invasive plants were thought of as exerting agency much more
commonly than other plants; the agency of weeds is clear, but unwelcome.
Further support for this vernacular view of agency was provided by an in-depth
linguistic analysis on a subset of three interviews from different gardener types. The
findings show the conditions under which the agency of animals and plants was
understood by our human participants (Thomson et al ., 2006). Animals and plants
were construed as Agents when perceived as the cause of an unwelcome process
or else undergoing something 'natural'. For example, the quotes, 'They [the
magpies] (Agent) are going to go for us' and 'They [weeds] (Agent) make it look
more mottled . . .' indicate unwelcome, agentive processes by magpies and weeds.
The quote, 'They (Agent) bear fruit' is an example of a 'natural' agentive process
by a tree. In contrast, non-weedy plants were expressed as places or locations where
things happen, as in 'Actually people drive on the front lawn' and '. . . and all the
undergrowth around them [roses and lilli-pillis]'. In general in these interviews,
humans are the agents of what goes on. Animals and plants undergo processes or
else just 'are' or 'happen'. However, if plants, animals and the physical elements
are involved in agency, then typically the impact of their agency is construed as
negative. In this way they are held responsible for their action.
The fact that the inanimate world is construed as positive only when it 'behaves'
itself is consistent with the frequent concern in the broader sample over matter (e.g.
trees, weeds, mess) being 'out of place'. It is tied up with the gardeners' reasons or
motivations behind their gardening practices, and their understanding of what
belongs in different places.
Practices with weeds
In this section I outline the main practices of weeding - albeit these are overlapping
categories - that emerged in interviews, observations and garden walks.