A Dublin suburban reader has his problems. When he moved to his present house, he decided to re-landscape his sloping garden, thus making some use of three years of art training in Ireland and France. On his wife's best tea-tray he made a scale model in plasticine of what he wanted to do. The final plan included a small hillock, and to make this he got 16 tonnes of soil from a Co Wicklow farm delivered to his front gate. The pleasant smells of "real Ireland", as he put it, added to the fun as all hands set to with borrowed wheelbarrows to move the earth around the house to what is now known as "Mound Everest". Neighbours and visitors were suitably impressed. "Ours was no formal garden with neat flower beds and dainty shrubs, but a 60-yard-long series of rises and falls on four levels."
But then the problem arose. With the rich soil, determined weeds smuggled themselves in. Not your modest things that you see even in the best gardens, but brutes like ragwort, thistle and docks "that are mentioned in notices outside rural Garda stations with warnings of penalties for neglectful landowners who harbour them". Supposing a wandering garda should look over the wall, he thought. On advice from a farmer he kept a slash-hook so that he could be seen attacking them. But the weeds spread from the hillock, not only on to his own lawn but also to the neighbours' finely cultivated patches. So, he thinks he has a problem. Does he sell the house and flee the district or mix up some evil brew - for these are formidable opponents? Well, the notices may still be up outside Garda stations, but the sergeant is unlikely to call at any neighbouring house that shows a burdock or two. They have more to keep them busy these days. Apparently the message is still carried, however, by notices in the press, according to a spokesman in agriculture.
In all this, is there no mention of the most persistent of weeds - goosegrass, cleevers or cleavers, or robin-run-the-hedge, that sticky "abundant scrambling annual" that Richard Mabey tells us can grow ten feet in a season. You can find it even beside city or suburban footpaths. But yes, geese and hens eat it. In Staffordshire an old dame used to make beer of it. The most persistent of all weeds, but easily pulled.