Americans spend $887 billion going camping and hiking and visiting national parks to view the beauty of nature, and then they go home and mow and spray and weed and fertilize and do everything they can to stop that nature from existing in their lawns and in their gardens.
Veronica Shukla. “For the Love of Mint in all its Spreading Glory.”
The whole article at Think Outside the Lawn is worth reading for why to unlearn what you’ve been taught about the necessity of rigidly managing mint in your garden lest it become unruly, swallow your neighbor’s cat, start mugging little old ladies down at the bus station, and throw the actual planet off its actual axis… or whatever it is that people think mint is going to do if you turn your back on it for one minute.
In a similar vein, I recommend “Stop Wasting Time and Money on Broken Ecosystem Functions” from the same blog.
Example:
Mowing, weed whacking, pulling, and spraying chemicals to remove all plants that would attract birds, bees, and butterflies for the sake of a “clean” monoculture lawn and a few nonnative ornamentals; and then purchasing and placing bird feeders, bird seed, nectar, bee boxes, etc.
Veronica Shulk, “Stop Wasting Time and Money on Broken Ecosystem Functions“
Bonus: lots of the “weeds” that want to grow in your lawn and in your area have medicinal, spiritual, and/or food uses in addition to being important to the local ecosystem totally independent of whether humans notice them or not.
Seraphin Station 