Urban Weeds
An exploration of ruderal plants, examining their ecological role in disturbed urban environments and arguing for a new aesthetic appreciation that challenges idealized views of nature.
The Urban Weeds project is a body of work, comprising presentations, performances, texts, and photographs, that focuses on spontaneous vegetation within the city. As a form of artistic research, this project is a significant part of my broader inquiry into how living and non-living entities shape our environment, as well as into infrastructure networks and our methods for comprehending the life cycles of different ecosystems. This text provides a background narrative on my interest in these organisms within my artistic practice, offers a general overview of the ruderal plant species referred to as urban weeds, and discusses their meaning in the artistic and aesthetic fields.
My particular interest in weeds was shaped by the influence of artists who were first my teachers and later my colleagues: Dr. Elif Çelebi, with her focus on holistic ecological methods and everyday life, and Prof. Tayfun Erdoğmuş, with his aesthetic understanding closely linked to botany. In 2018, I also participated in the exhibition "ot" (weed/herb), conceptualized by Assoc. Prof. Devabil Kara and Öznur Güzel Karasu at the Marmara University Republic Museum, where twelve artists and I approached the subject from various perspectives.
During the time I spent in the countryside in the 1990s, I frequently witnessed the farmers' ongoing war against weeds. Questions over which plant was "good" versus "bad," or when intervention was necessary, were quite confusing. For the farmers, there was no abstract concept of "nature." Years later, these early experiences led me to shut down my plant-care website and turn my focus completely to urban plants. Discovering the opportunity to observe the behavior of organisms in the city without direct human control led me to take an interest in open systems and to direct my artistic practice outside the studio.
During an artist residency in Berlin in 2019, I had the chance to study urban weeds in greater detail within the context of art and urban ecology. Berlin holds a special place in urban ecology. In the post-war ruins and on vacant lots, plants not previously seen in the city began to grow. These were generally species adapted to high levels of disturbance, their seeds often brought unknowingly by soldiers from different countries (Gandy, 2017). After the construction of the Berlin Wall, different plant species grew on either side of the city, demonstrating how military and political structures directly shaped the organization of life. This new environment was studied in depth by pioneers of urban ecology like Herbert Sukopp. Today, Berlin still bears these traces, containing unique areas where its botanical and cultural diversity directly intersect (Stoetzer, 2018). During my time there, with the support of artist Sema Bekirovic, I made observations in abandoned buildings from the war era, in unused factories on the city's outskirts, and on ruderal plots deliberately created within the city.
Ruderal Species
The plants that live in disturbed areas, which I refer to as “sokak otları” (urban / street weeds), are known in botany as ruderal species.
In ecology, disturbance is a fundamental process in plant adaptation. These events can be natural, such as floods, storms, and fires, or they can be caused directly by human impact (White and Pickett, 1985; Grime, 2006). Ruderal plants have developed strategies to survive in such lands where other vegetation would quickly perish. The term "ruderal," derived from the Latin word rudus (rubble), highlights this intrinsic relationship with destruction. In cities, these plants grow among rubble, in abandoned lots, cemeteries, parking lots, sidewalk cracks, and industrial sites. In rural areas, they are found on lands disturbed by agriculture, animal husbandry, and forestry.
Common ruderal species in large Turkish cities include Pellitory-of-the-wall (Parietaria judaica), Shepherd's-purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris), and Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), among many others (Altay and Karahan, 2017). A portion of these are "pioneer species," which are resilient, reproduce quickly, and can adapt to nutrient-poor soils and varying conditions. Some of these plants also exhibit invasive characteristics. Invasive plants can spread rapidly and eliminate other species due to their genetic diversity, stress tolerance, and the absence of natural enemies in new regions (Simberloff, 2011). Today, invasives are one of the primary species that humans combat, mainly due to the economic damage they cause. These plants have spread across the globe, aided by human mobility and climate change. In Turkey, species like the Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima) are classified as invasive (Önen, 2014).
The Perception of 'Weed' and Urban Aesthetics
"Weed," another term used for many ruderal species, is generally defined as "the wrong plant in the wrong place." The plants designated as "weeds" vary greatly depending on history and geography. It is not uncommon for a plant protected in one region to be defined as harmful in another. For example, the Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima) has gone through various phases in Europe. This East Asian plant was first valued as an ornamental, later prized for its medicinal properties, and is now considered an undesirable invasive in many parts of the world (Kowarik and Säumel, 2007). Richard Mabey argues that "weed" is a cultural, not a biological, category, suggesting that weeds are not only plants in the wrong place but also plants that have crossed into the wrong culture (Mabey, 2010). Such categorizations are generally based on a human-centered ideology.
Mabey explains that the rise of agriculture was a pivotal moment in forming our modern concept of nature, as it conceptually split the world into two camps: managed organisms for human benefit and "wild" ones left to their own devices. According to Mabey, weeds appear precisely when this neat division breaks down (Mabey, 2010).
The urban environment itself is a key factor in our negative perception. Weeds usually grow in the city's functionally ambiguous or neglected areas. Consequently, our perspective on urban aesthetics affects how these plants are interpreted. As Peter Del Tredici notes, most city dwellers tend to see spontaneous urban vegetation as a sign of neglect, whereas they would view the exact same plants in a rural setting as "wildflowers" (Del Tredici, 2010).
A general aesthetic preference for clean, new, and manicured objects causes plants to be treated like industrial products. This understanding of beauty is entirely cultural. In contrast, the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi is based on the passage of time; therefore, aging, decay, and imperfections are considered measures of beauty (Juniper, 2011). Beyond aesthetics, the city's "imperfections" are ecologically beneficial. Del Tredici emphasizes the importance of cracks in the pavement, which allow water to seep through, collecting moisture and nutrients that support microbial diversity (Del Tredici, 2014). Weeds often appear at the intersections of different materials, such as the base of walls. These edges are areas of intense diversity at both macro and micro scales.
Ruderal plants are a vital part of the urban ecosystem, living a life integrated with its infrastructure. Yet in large cities like Istanbul, this relationship is often ignored. Instead, ornamental plants that are difficult and uneconomical to maintain are forced upon the city. Inevitably, when these ornamentals fail to survive, ruderal plants take over the spaces opened for them. This triggers a wasteful cycle of removing the weeds only to plant new ornamentals. Beyond the significant loss of energy, this process results in the destruction of both the desired plants and the weeds. This entire futile cycle demonstrates how our aesthetic perception and our view of nature directly determine the approach to the city's green spaces.
Cities, like all ecosystems, possess complex dynamics. A multitude of actors, including humans, engage in multifaceted interactions. Urban plants are one of the most visible indicators of this complexity. It is impossible to keep such a system under complete control or force it to conform to rigid plans. In this context, defining weeds as undesirable is not only unrealistic but also fails to offer an ecologically adaptable perspective. A better path is to embrace coexistence with these organisms that are already well-adapted to the city and to adopt approaches that benefit both humans and plants.
Urban Weeds and Art
Observing the environment outside the studio has been a central activity for artists, especially since Impressionism. However, movements aimed at representing the external world within its own dynamic relationships, without idealization, became prominent in the second half of the 20th century. This manifested in works that emphasized environmental dynamics such as change and decay, seen in movements like Conceptual art, Fluxus, and Arte Povera.
A specific interest in ruderal plants emerged with art's turn toward activism and social and scientific issues. The works of Hans Haacke, a founder of Systems art, created using weeds in the 1960s, are based on the idea of establishing or pointing to living, real-time systems (Haacke, 2016). Lois Weinberger is another artist who has built his practice on ruderal plants. In his work for Documenta X in 1997, he planted "foreign" ruderal seeds from Eastern Europe on railway tracks, creating a dialogue between plants and political activism (Weinberger et al., 2017). Other artists like Maria Thereza Alves and Oliver Kellhammer have also worked with ruderal plants, producing works that do not conceive of nature as an idealistic world separate from humans. This aesthetic is not one of nature romanticism or of "nature resisting man." It is an aesthetic that proposes sensing objects not only by their appearance but by their functional connections and surrounding networks. Sarah Cowles defines a similar approach as "Ruderal Aesthetics" (Cowles, 2017).
Urban Weeds and the Concept of Nature
One of the most important aspects of urban weeds is their ability to blur the nature-culture duality. Today, despite the discourse of contemporary ecology, the common perspective on nature remains romantic. Nature is generally described as a distant place of great harmony, a "garden of Eden." Popular discourse often suggests that nature has a certain balance and that when "sinful" humans withdraw, it will restore itself. To truly understand human impact, however, this idealistic idea of nature must be dismantled.
Contrary to the "balance of nature" belief, ecosystems are frequently disrupted by invasive species, fires, floods, and droughts (Adams, 2012). When these disturbances cease, there is no guarantee that the area will return to its former state. Ecosystems do not have a final state of balance or a purpose. Contemporary ecology sees the ecosystem as a mosaic in motion, a complex system where disturbances are not anomalies but a critical element for the continuity of life (Simus, 2008).
Humans are part of this ecosystem, culturally as well as materially. The relationship between people and weeds has developed through migration, famine, and war, not just agriculture. The remarkable adaptive abilities of weeds, such as transporting seeds via car tires, reveal their deep connection to human culture. In this sense, weeds are not nature that has infiltrated the city; they are plants that have evolved to live there. They are as urban as we are. Therefore, urban weeds challenge all our idealizations of nature. Because they grow in disturbed areas, they also shake up our human-centered views on what is beneficial or harmful. Addressing environmental issues requires a more detailed perspective that does not exclude culture and local elements, rather than caricaturing them with sharp boundaries between an idealized nature and humanity.
The Experience of Weed Watching
Urban weeds allow us to approach plants outside the framework of human interests. Trying to comprehend other living beings for their own existence, beyond purposes like eating, drinking, or healing, opens up a space for both empathy and sensation. Each change of scale provides a new aesthetic awareness. To watch weeds, one needs not only to wander the city but also to "bend down" and "stop" for a time within its rapid movement. The micro-ecosystems that weeds form create not only physical atmospheres but also areas of mental concentration. Activating the body to watch is a valuable counterpoint to a visual culture where the body is often fixed.
Another important element of weed watching is the high factor of chance. As Gilles Clément writes, plants, and especially weeds, travel (Clément, 2011). Although plants are not as mobile as animals, the short life cycles of weeds, their rapid growth, and their constant exposure to human intervention create a temporal effect quite different from long-lived plants. This is one reason they are perceived as insignificant; their temporality is vastly different from the human scale. It is this very difference that creates an opportunity to imagine another way of life. Following a plant for a few days only to find it gone allows us to re-read the connection between feelings of anticipation, attachment, and loss with time and chance. Focusing on the differences of weeds can profoundly change our way of seeing. Today, interest in weeds has grown considerably, and the sharing of this interest through various media creates a positive awareness for urban ecology, promoting a vital and transient way of thinking about aesthetics.
References
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