Taken from Eclectic Gardener @ http://www.teachinggarden.org/
written by Alan R Hickman

Long before there were gardens and gardeners tot tend them, it is as good as certain that there were people engaged in the most basic of gardening practices - weeding. When nomadic hunter/gatherers came upon edible vegetables or roots, or fruit-bearing shrubs or trees, they would rip out or trample down undesirable vegetation ether to gain access or to intentionally give the food plants room to spread.

Ten thousand or more years ago, as the tribes began to coalesce around the peculiarly domestic-able plants and animals to be found in the 'fertile crescent', the people were already proto gardeners, and their skills still echo in the earliest of myths. Adam was created as a gardener, and Eden was not a pioneer's farmstead.

In principle, gardening is not so much the practice of adding plants that are wanted, as it is one of removing plants that are not wanted. When a few wild rye plants spring up on a hillside, if all the nearby not-wild-rye plants are removed, year by year the patch of edible grain will get bigger. If the rye patch is surrounded by a barrier of thorny brush and sticks, wild animals will stay away and, voila, a rye garden.

With pulling out unwanted growth having so long a history and being the very essence of gardening, one might suppose that weeding would be held in high regard and that gardeners would be experts at the task. Sadly, the popular reality is exactly the opposite. Weeding is considered to be a backbreaking, boring, dumb-ass chore, to be avoided if possible and rushed through when avoidance is no longer an option.

For those with the good luck to have had a knowing teacher and for those who have learned by sheer dint of a lifetime of doing, weeding can be one of a gardener's most satisfying occupations
While the time between planting and the reward of flowers or crops must be measured in weeks or months, weeding skillfully done offers something close to instant gratification. Just as a gifted beautician can transform a tramp into Clark Gable (try George Clooney if you're not my age), so a long neglected border can be restored to a thing of beauty with a few hours of skilled and judicious weeding.

For most home gardeners, the idea of weeding for 'a few hours' is an horrendous prospect. The sheer physical pain of all the bending and crawling around likely will terminate the activity quite quickly. And, as if the aching is not enough, just to make it all more stressful there's the added anxiety of not knowing for sure which is the expensive cultivated plant and what are the unwanted volunteer offspring or adventitious weeds.

The association of weeding and discomfort is almost universal and with good reason. Most people don't have a clue how to weed and they grossly misuse their bodies.

Spinal columns evolved to be horizontal, to be suspended by a pair of legs at each end, and to be counter-balanced by a head and a tail. When primates got to standing vertically on their hind legs, the stresses changed from bending to compression and to support the new loads the bones in the structure took up a sort of woggly 'S' arrangement.

Given the way they started out, human spines are quite effective. We can run fast, we can see far and we can move heavy things, but what we can't do any more is carry our upper bodies horizontally. At least, we cannot stoop for any length of time and still remain comfortable.

A low wooden gardening bench - not a flimsy plastic thing that sinks into the soil when you sit on it - is an indispensable component in a gardener's tool kit.

Made from a scrap of 2x8 lumber and used with a small foam pad, a gardening bench transforms weeding and planting and trimming from drudgery to be eschewed into activities to be enjoyed and even lingered over.

Of course, saying that if you are going to weed you need a bench and a fork is like saying that if you are going to make a cake you need a bowl and a spoon. There is rather more to it than that.

Unfortunately, eight hundred words or fewer can only introduce the concept. For the meaty bits, see www.teachinggarden.org and enroll for the free winter gardening classes and for next summer's hands-on-in-garden skills coaching.

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