LIVING IN A WEEDY FUTURE - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 97

sometimes conflictual practices. To conclude, I focus here on the similarities across
the sample that might inform wider debates about invasive plants.
First, in this study, plants were most commonly construed as agentive when
doing something unwanted. As humans, we seem to have least trouble acknow-
ledging plant agency when it is negative. Second, it follows that unwanted plant
agency invokes many different types of human response, summarised here as a range
of practices including tidying, production, and purification. These weedy practices
provide a basis for comparison with other studies in different natural resource
management contexts. They are also spatially uneven, depending on where people
understand certain types of nature to belong (cf. Gill et al ., 2010).
Third, weed management takes a lot of effort (whether pleasurable or not),
invested over the long term. Initial investment and maintenance require different
kinds of labour and vigilance. It is a job that will never be finished, but carefully
targeted, long-term labour can make a difference. The most successful and
contented garden weed managers are comfortable with the fact that plants have a
life of their own and do their own thing.
Finally, I argue that we need a more open acknowledgement of the contra-
dictions, edginess and difficult choices that attend contemporary Australia's engage-
ments with nature. The times require us to go beyond the ideal of a pristine past
and more honestly face a fraught, unpredictable and surprising future. Resilient,
opportunistic, larrikin weeds may be more useful companions on that journey than
we can yet imagine - and gardeners who live with them one of our instructors.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the Australian Research Council for funding (DP0211327 and
FL0992397).
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