A weed is just a plant in the wrong place – many gardeners will have said these words to themselves with a wry smile when contemplating an afternoon of pulling up nettles or digging out ground elder.

This delightful pamphlet is proof – if needed – that weeds can be every bit as beautiful as the flowers we choose to cultivate in our gardens. In a poem about a variety of hawkweed, the speaker’s attention is caught by the unexpected vividness of flowers growing close to a disused gravel pit:

“What is it about tiny yellow flowers?
The way they scatter through spring grass,
a thin gauze of lemon magic.”

from ‘Mouse-ear Hawkweed’ by Ian Humphreys

These days, we’re encouraged to make space for a few weeds in our gardens. Bees and butterflies find them irresistible, so why shouldn’t we? This lively and varied mini anthology seems to agree.

Poems by William Barnes, Jane Burn, Victoria Gatehouse, James Stanley Gilbert, Lorna Goodison, Ian Humphreys, L Kiew, Vernon Scannell, Anne Stevenson and Beth Winegarner.

Cover illustration by Sara Boccaccini Meadows.