How well do you know your weeds from your plants?

When it comes to keeping your garden looking lovely, how well do you know your weeds from your plants?

Most of us are familiar with the common weeds that can cause problems in our gardens, and can probably identify culprits such as dandelions, daisies, nettles, creeping buttercup and bindweed.  But there’s a whole host of wild plants that could easily be tricking you into thinking they’re actually cultivated varieties.

So how do you work out what’s a weed, and what isn’t?  Well, a good place to start is to see how accurate your knowledge already is.

I’m collaborating with the lovely people at Co-Operative insurance to bring you a fun garden quiz which tests your plant knowledge.

The quiz shows you images of plants, and asks you to choose whether they are garden plants or wild flowers, aka weeds.

It’s a fun way to expand your knowledge of common weeds, and you can also see how well you know your plant names at the same time.  I scored 10 out of 15 on the quiz – not too bad!  There were a few surprises in there, I won’t give away any of the answers here but let’s just say my garden is home to more ‘weeds’ than I realised!

Now obviously, if you like the way a plant looks, the fact that it’s officially classed as a weed isn’t really that relevant.  By definition, a weed is a wild plant that grows where it is not wanted, amongst cultivated plants – so if you’re happy to have it in your garden, fair enough.  It is worth knowing a little bit about how the weed in question behaves though, because some varieties can be very invasive and will quickly overwhelm other garden plants.  The Co-Operative quiz gives you tips on how to keep each weed featured under control, so it’s not just useful for identifying weeds, it also gives you really practical advice should you choose to keep them in your garden.

If you like the idea of testing your knowledge of plants vs. weeds, you can take the quiz yourself over at the Co-Operative insurance hub.  How many do you think you’d get right?  Let me know how you get on in the comments.