Comment: Weeds can make a garden cheaper and more manageable in France 

The day after I moved into my French farmhouse, the brothers I had bought it from came round to point out various features that the estate agent might have omitted to mention. 

Behind the kitchen range they said, was a large 12th-Century fireplace, and there is another one upstairs. 

Outside, they were keen to tell me the story behind each overgrown tree in the garden, and give me details about how the outside lavatory used to function when they were children. (It is a sheep shelter now.) 

Moving on, they started reminiscing about the well.

"It used to be here," said one brother. "Non, it was over there," said the other one, fetching a large pitchfork from the barn. "Just about here," he said, jabbing the earth and kicking back clumps of it with his feet.

"Mind the lady's gazon!" said his brother. "Don't mess it up!" 

We were amazed that the expanse of weeds covering the courtyard could be described as a gazon. It was mainly mown docks and nettles, if the truth be told.

"I mowed it for you, so it would look nice."

"Thank you. How kind. So where is the well you were talking about?"

"Who knows," he said while his brother continued stabbing at the earth. "It's been closed off these past 20 years, but it used to be there all right."

Read more: Comment: House hunting in France is full of surprises

Weeding tips

They went off, only to return a few weeks later to show us how to start the lawn mower they had left in the barn, and we started the routine of mowing the lawn every few weeks. I got quite enthusiastic about it, going as far as to buy special stuff to kill the weeds and encourage the grass. I spent time hacking at the nettles and uprooted dozens of thistles. I sprinkled it with lawn fertiliser, which in some mysterious way was supposed to fertilise grass but not any other plants.

Over time more grass grew and, viewed from inside the house, the courtyard is now grassed over. But if you look where you are going, you can easily see that it really isn't a lawn. Only about half of it is covered with grass. The rest is still just weeds. So we gave up. We went on mowing it but left the weeds to do their own thing. 

The benefits have been enormous. It is cheaper, it is less effort, the weeds do not die off and go yellow in the summer heat, and now it turns out that it is more ecological and better for biodiversity to let the weeds grow.

There is just one slightly uneasy thought in my brain when I look at our lovely lawn. What if the well was sealed off with a wooden cover? What if one day it rots away and the cover falls in? What if it was sealed off with a metal one which goes rusty? 

Well, well, well...

Read more: ‘French towns should ditch hanging baskets and learn to love weeds’