Every time I wait for the train to take me toward the city I sit on the railing of the station with my bike resting gleefully on its support and overlooking the overgrown landscaping. This would never happen in America, where we are absolutely obsessed to ´perfectly manicured lawns as seen circa the 1950s in perfect-looking American neighborhoods. The grass grows an average of 2 inches too much and we go absolutely insane and quick to judge at how unkempt it looks. The lawn must be watered all the time because how else would you interact with your neighbors, boys must learn how to cut it regularly because cutting nature is manly, and everything must be kept unreasonably short like it is about to go into the military. I never got it. Where did the native plants go, or the diversity, or the creativity? The landscaping that attracts my attention the most is the green spaces with plenty for your hands to touch and your eyes to see (sometimes even for your nose to smell). Succulents, ferns, flowers, palm trees, shrubs and yes, even weeds. In fact, in the US, keeping up the lawn is one of the major sources of energy consumption. Acres upon acres of grassed lawn must be watered, cut regularly through a mower working on (you guessed it) gasoline or electricity, and removed of all weeds. Whats more, among the dozen or so main grasses that make up the American lawn, none are native to America. Like one of my friends I was interning with at the Sierra Club last year, I henceforth declare a war on lawns! A lawn with more diverse, native selection of plants, and yes even weeds is so much more efficient than the gross grassy monoculture. Brown spots are naturally covered, and it can provide so many more functions at little cost. Now a days the vision of taking care of the lawn and sitting back with your family to see your results has even been outsourced to someone else´s job. It's a myth.
Lucky for me, the situation in Copenhagen is a little bit different. The grasses grow really tall and the weeds have taken the time to multiply for all their worth. I mean, there is definitely still landscaping, and parks with grass become quickly occupied by every single person in Copenhagen. But the notion that suburbs need that pristine prepubescent cut grass has been really little for me. Instead, when I navigate the city, the train station, edge-places, or even public parks, I find myself admiring the vast array of beautiful weeds that make their way toward the sky. They are a marvel of adaptation. Some paths, public gardens, and street banks are filled with species that are often called “invasive,” “noxious,” and “weed,” the kinds of plants that conservationists rail against and homeowners consider unsightly. Open your eyes, it is an emergent forest, an ecosystem formed spontaneously without the help of human hands. It is unique to this city, and it has helped my way to connect with Copenhagen. Every time I am in the park I use weed flowers that catch my attention to make flower crowns. The wild flowers swiftly sway with the wind in the nature reserve near my house. When it was Jakob's birthday I surprised him with different weeds and made him a beautiful bouquet that made the dinner table look lovely. Sometimes there is a weed where you least expect it, in between the pavement and the earth, or coming out of a rock, releasing outward its beautiful yellow flowers to show just how much nature will do. Other times, looking out into a diversified mix of tall grass, yellow weeding flowers, dandelions, grass and bushes make a hedonistic image of how the ecosystem of Denmark really is. While I do like the ecosystem in Miami, with its long fern leaves, tall palm trees, and weeds with radiating serrated leaves and curling grasses, the persistence of flowers in Copenhagen definitely wins this round.
A weed is a political term. No biological definition of it exists. And since it is a value judgement, I find it that weeds are rather beautiful. A lot like Copenhagen!