Hi Melissa, I do pretty much the same thing with my Evening Primrose which would take over the whole world if it could; it reseeds where I haven't mulched but it's so pretty, it's a native and does help keep the weeds at bay. When it's done I'll pull out some and mulch in spots I don't want it to come back.

Have to keep reminding myself to let Mother Nature do her thing! I also have a bed along the side of my house that has mint planted way before I knew better; efforts to remove it have been futile, and the roses don't seem to mind, so I leave it and call it my "wild bed"! Also have yarrow and other stuff I didn't want in my main beds. Actually it's kind of pretty and so easy to care for. :)

I do a lot of weeding in my garden. The weeds are better this year than last year. One reason is that I mulched in fall as well as spring, which keeps the spring annual weeds from germinating in the beds. I use shredded hardwood mulch which has no weed seeds and lasts about 6 months before needing to be refreshed. I also used a corn based organic pre-emergent weed suppressor on my lawn. The annual weeds are fewer, but still a lot in places. I think this is a multi-year project to get manageable. Dandilions are a little better but they are hard to kill. Wild onions I dig up by the handful and make sure I remove the bulb but they seem to come back or seed like crazy. I also have some invasive plants I regret introducing to my garden that I am always pulling back from unwanted areas -- periwinkle, lovely plant where you want it, creeping weed where you don't. Wild strawberry is horrible. Mint I planted years ago before I knew better. Garlic chives given to me as a gift from another gardener -- gee, thanks. Same with wild violets.

Yesterday I came around the corner and saw such a lovely arrangement of Spring flowers in one bed that I ran and got my camera. It was about 4 sq ft. In the front were bright yellow oxalis mingled in with tiny pale blue forget-me-nots. In the back were 2 ft high valerian plants, just coming into bloom with their dark pink flowers.

Of course, I did not plant or arrange ANY of these - they just showed up on their own. It is humbling when Mother Nature does a better job than I do! The oxalis has to be pulled eventually, as it will shade out other plants (I have seen it get 2 1/2 feet tall!). I pull the forget-me-nots out when they are done blooming, because otherwise they have horrible seed burrs that the cats like to roll in and bring into the house. I gave up trying to get rid of the Valerian years ago - I just cut it way down in the Fall. I don't know if they are native - I know the valerian is not, not sure about the other two. Probably just naturalized in CA after being introduced - we have lots of plants like that. It is sometimes nice to just relax and enjoy the beauty that Mother Nature provides.

Jackie

I do a lot of weeding and a lot of mulching. I need only look beyond my garden beds to the hills around my garden to see what it would look like if I did not. It isn't garden-like, mostly thistles and poison oak and scrub. I've seen Melissa's hills and they are glorious. Mine, only from a distance, not up close and personal.

Rosefolly

The weeds are horrible this year because of the abundant rain we've had. The worst part is that many of them are spiky, thistle-like monsters that get huge. Once the soil is dry they're impossible to pull out. Once they get larger they're also impossible to pull out. One area that was covered with alyssum the last few years is now covered with noxious weeds. Most areas are too large to mulch. Probably what will happen is that when it's hot and dry my husband will weed-whack all this stuff, a sweaty and dusty task. There doesn't seem to be a good solution. Even the parts I did mulch have many thorny weeds growing through them. I can only hope that when the roses are in full bloom they eye will focus on them and the weeds won't be as obvious.

Ingrid

Not doing much weeding this year. I have done in my right knee. It occurred last year, weeding. All winter I have been nursing the old thing, trying to avoid an operation.
I have this little garden cart I'm going to try. You can sit on it. Still I'm going to get as much summer as I can. It's snowing again tonight. Six weeks to go.

Hmmm, not much positive reception here. I notice a lot of you are talking about perennial weeds. I agree, they're no fun. I have all Lori's weeds and they're just as obnoxious here as they are in her garden, except for the violets, which are so glorious I forgive them for being invasive. I rather like dandelions: the flowers smell sweet--I had to read this in a book on herbs to know it--and the greens are edible and tasty. Besides, dandelions have personality and are almost pretty enough to serve as ornamentals. I'd feel deprived if I had no dandelions. But I leave them in the rough parts of the garden, not in the more civilized areas.
Some of my annual weeds are ugly, and I do pull them. I get pretty tired of chickweed, and there's a really ugly large weed coming up now, with a taproot, that I kill whenever I can. And we have our lovely thistles, and a plant with terrible sticky seeds that are almost impossible to get off clothes, and so on. But I get a lot of pleasure out of the many delicate and graceful plants that seed themselves around the garden every year and grow with no intervention on my part at all.
You Californians have a different climate than we do here, and your native flora is considerably different. I don't know what the promise of your wild plants would be.
My reading and observation tell me that weeds don't just 'happen'. A lot of them grow in disturbed ground, for example; and many of them are thrifty and have a competitive edge in poor or degraded conditions. Where we've had slides, for example, the first year the bare ground is covered with weeds; the next year grass comes, and after a couple more years have passed, pioneer shrubs and some really tough trees can start to work their way in. Herbaceous weeds love sun, as a rule, so growing shrubs and trees discourages them (though they give a hand to those plagues wild clematis and elm). Knowing these things I can help create conditions that favor the plants I want to grow.
Dang, Kaylah, that sounds rough, both weather and knee--my knees are shaky too. I don't envy you your weather, though here at the moment we could use a bit of chill and rain. This year it seems as though when March ended we skipped April and passed straight on to May. It's warm, and hasn't rained for a couple weeks; and there's no rain in the forecast for another ten days. The ground is already cracking.
Melissa

yay, Melissa, I'm with you all the way. My little home garden - immaculate. My allotments - weedpits! Having spent 8 tortuous years (I have almost spent lifetimes on my knees) - the weed resevoir has diminished not one bit. If I spent 6 hours a day, every day, I might make a dent but I am following the Quentin Crisp method, applied to gardening instead of housework - after the first 4 years, it doesn't get any worse. Alongside selective vision (as I was writing this, sweetheart piped up 'the first eyeballs have been artificially grown from stem cells'!!!), I just ignore the hordes of dandelions and mallow. while little annuals are victims of a sharp hoe. Having terrible eyesight is a positive help since I generally only see a colourful blur. Butterflies will be well provided for in my garden, plenty of food for all sorts of insects and larvae - the bees are gorging themselves on purple deadnettle and speedwell. So yesterday, I just weeded around stems and trunks - I am truly idle as I tend to leave the weeds lying on the surface (a mulch of sorts?) until they sort of disappear. So hey, Melissa, lets look forward to a summer of relaxed gardening, resisting all temptation to dive in and get just one more groundsel.

I don't weed much either;I don't have time, for one thing, what with trying to clear land for new garden space . I have these sweet little blue flowers (wild veronica?) and this other type of annual weed that I really like ; I don't know what it is, but it has kind of succulent, soft green stems and leaves, and tiny,non-showy white flowers. Both of these are shallow-rooted, and grow only where I've improved the soil sufficiently,so the very sight of them encourages me. My garden is far too big to mulch with bark chips-could never afford that. I gather chestnut debris(burrs and leaves) from a friend's chestnut grove,but most of that winds up as organic matter for the new areas of garden. I keep on telling myself"some day,once I've cleared the land, I can get this stuff and mulch ", but I think that the best solution in the long run for me will be shallow-rooted ground covers...including that naughty vinca!
Melissa, I totally agree with you about the weather here: When it's cool,this is indeed a beautiful time of year,but now it really is too hot; it's so hard to get anything done; you have to put out three times as much effort in order to accomplish one third of what you'd do if the temperature was nice!I sure hope it will change and go back to being spring...regards, bart

Melissa...I'm chuckling here. This is our second ElNino year and so we are all drowning and getting rather moldie. Enjoy the sunshine.
Whenever the rain lets up I'm weeding like mad because once the rain stops it's a darn drag trying to get the weed roots out.
Truth be told the rain has eased off the last 2 weeks to rain showers. We're getting there. I cant wait for spring.
Jeannie

I really don't like the way the downhill section of the Rose Road looks, too many ugly weeds--as opposed to reasonably attractive ones. But that's why I've been planting shrubs there, as well as for wind protections and to hold the ground in place. The Prunus lusitanica I installed two years ago is finally putting out new leaves: hooray! Who knows, perhaps even this exceptionally cranky piece of ground can be made to flourish, some day, somehow. I'm in my seventh year of struggle with it. Also, I think I need more rosemary. It really digs itself in and can take just about anything here, and it's dense enough to outcompete Bermuda grass and discourage most weeds. A great plant.
Bart, do you have any photos of your garden? (People ask me this and I say "No", because I hate taking and uploading pictures. Also our camera is now broken.) Or would you care to describe it in a topic? I believe I did a thread on my garden a few years ago.
Melissa

I'll try to get to this soon, Melissa. Frankly, I'm very busy now trying to get as much done as I can before the ground is so dry and it's so hot that I can't work outside anymore. I WIL try to do some pics, hopefully during the spring flush,and I'd like to do a Flickr page or something, since I'm so electronically challenged, and hate dealing with uploading, too; if I had a photo album I can just put in the link (I'm on the Peter Beales and the Paul Zimmerman forums, too). Once it's summer, and too hot and miserable to be feasible to go out much, I hope to have more time on computer...AND look for the descriptio of your garden as well! regards, bart

I like small flowers under my roses, but I use annuals that reseed rather than weeds. Alyssum is my favorite and I'm also trying some perennials, such as sweet violets (not as invasive as many of you seem to have) and little viola/Johnny Jump-ups. I also let strawberries and sweet woodruff grow under the blueberries, along with some coneflower and daisies.

I have more of a cottage garden style, but my weeds (even the prettier ones) are so invasive, they grow over the top of everything else! Here's a picture of my kitchen garden, from last August. I was so busy in the front beds (all new garden beds) that I didn't get a chance to weed the kitchen garden, as much as I should have. This year, I've already started :)

All the white flowers are weeds, growing over the tops of all my little shrubs. Luckily, they were all fine, when I finally found them, again! LOL

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Okay, Bart, I look forward to seeing your garden. My thread about my own garden is from a couple of years ago, I think. By the way, do you know Italian? There are a couple of Italian gardening forums. I belong to the Compagnia del Giardinaggio; one of the moderators, Maurizio/MorrisNoor, posts here on GardenWeb sometimes.
Lavender Lass, I like your lawn mowers! Looks like you have a good garden in the making.
Melissa