A weed is any plant in the wrong place. Grass in the rose bed is a weed because you decided you wanted roses. A rose in the lawn is a weed as you decided you wanted grass. I think dandelions are unpopular because they seed very freely, so they pop up all over the place and they have very long roots that make it difficult to get rid of them and that let them regrow after attempts at weeding them out. In the right place, for example a meadow, they are part of a mixture of vegetation that usually contains all sorts of plants that you would remove from a flower bed.

They also do have the nasty habit of choking plants which we want to grow. In the right place though...........and as bee food stations, unbeatable.

This is a very good question, Guest. The dandelion is a beatiful flower, much nicer than some of the ones that we grow in the garden. It is reliable, easy to grow and does not seed around any miore than some of the plants that I grow in our garden.

And of course you can eat the leaves (blanched) as a vegetable. And the roots are used as a coffee substitute.

You can eat the young leaves raw in a salad OwdB though watch out for the diuretic effect :-)

I agree Beattie in a natural meadow dandelions, clover, willow herb, poppies and other 'weeds' look wonderful. There is nothing better than an alpine meadow and if you look at closely most of the flowers are 'weeds' but in the garden they are aggressive and choke out the plants we are trying to grow. Perhaps we should just stop and let nature take its course...

Until, of course, your neighbors call the cops over weed ordinances!...Sorry, bit of a sore point with would-be natural and wildflower gardeners around here!

Don't think 'weed ordinances' exist in the UK - they certainly don;t where we live. But I would not encourage anyone to have a wild flower garden unless they were going to give it the same attention they would give any other garden - it still needs to be managed.

'Struth! Part of the problem is that "natural gardening" is often used as an excuse by the "rusty truck school of landscape design" here. It makes life harder for the rest of us.

I like that term, T, "rusty truck school of landscape design" LOL

Google "Redneck", and you will get a bunch of books that describe a good third of the residents of Arizona!

But does anyone have the seed of the white dandelion?

"rusty truck school of landscape design" LOL x 2! :-)

Think we could be founder members..... I have a collection of pick axe heads, shovels and bottles that I've found in the garden. There's a bent car jack that I'm sure could tell a story!

No matter where you live you will find folk who have no interest in looking after their garden/land. This is why we now have two large veggie plots as the owners of the land did not want to do anything with. We also now have rights to an apple and a plum tree!

I wish I, personally, could spend more time working the land... it WILL happen and I AM going to retire in 2 years! This sudden noise stems from the fact that Mr MB & I were up on the north coast of mainland Scotland for a long weekend. I totally enjoyed the just being and the walking, birding. botanising...