RHS What's That Weed?: Know Your Weeds and Learn to Live with Them

by Guy Barter

While acknowledging that weeds are vital to the ecosystem and becoming more widely appreciated, this illustrated volume also advises gardeners on how best to manage their spread. From the delicate annual scarlet pimpernel to the highly invasive Japanese knotweed it identifies 45 common weeds, explains their growing habits and ways to control them without resorting to chemicals, and which ones deserve tolerance.

Genres: Nonfiction, Gardening, Plants

144 pages, Hardcover

Published March 7, 2024

Reviews

[Sue Bottino]

Informative. Especially entertaining to learn about where the names and nicknames of plants come from. I liked the author's approach to explaining pros and cons of having different plants in your yard. The photos of the plants in various stages is very helpful for identification.

[Jim]

Excellent book on weeds. It covered a lot of the weeds that I see in our garden. Good pictures

[Amanda Giles]

Very useful and clearly laid out.

[Helen]

Useful book, clearly layed out and easy to read.

[Andi Butler]

The stars are for layout and design, and even then, the double page spreads here and there of just weeds in the natural landscape would be better used for additional weeds that aren’t listed. It’s too small a book to be comprehensive. If I had only this book, looking at my yard, there are three or four weeds I still wouldn’t be able to identify.

Edit: This is from the RHS, or Royal Horticultural Society in the UK. Where their logo would be, we in the US have a DK logo on the cover instead. Much less useful than a book specific to the US and its regions. This is a pass.

[Louise Hall]

Really useful guide to the weeds we have in our garden, and for the benefits of leaving some for the wildlife