You could be forgiven for thinking that gardening is primarily the study of entomology.

Industrial agriculture, the expansion of urban areas and infrastructure, and changing climate patterns have caused a crash in the population of insects around the world. Even in developed countries habitats are constantly under threat, and in many areas ecosystems are perilously close to collapse.

Rallying To The Cause

Gardeners have, by and large, really taken the cause to heart.

We’re already dealing with vegetation, the plants in our gardens, and wildlife is already amply able to take advantage of the habitats we create. Our gardens are not pristine habitats by any means, and can never replace those habitats lost to the advancement of our own species.

Butterflies are having a good year here

But at least we try.

Gardeners are generally good people who want to make a difference. We might not have acres to rewild, but we like to help when we can.

Selective Vision

We like to help some wildlife.

A friendly robin

I’m delighted to see bees and butterflies in the gardens I look after, but I’m far less keen on deer and rabbits. I want to do my bit for the natural world, but it would be very nice if the natural world wouldn’t eat my plants.

One garden I look after is plagued by the wrong sort of wildlife. The garden is rural and open to countryside and woodland, so every deer and badger for miles around shows up sooner or later. Grey squirrels scrape bark from trees as part of the process of marking their territory, while the deer graze new leaves and flowers, leaving plants stunted and boring.

You can imagine how insulting a single tulip would be

Each year the client plants tulips in memory of his late wife – they were her favourite flowers – and each year deer come and remove every flower. No, that’s not quite true; they always leave one single, solitary tulip behind. This is somehow more insulting than them eating every last flower.

Cult Of The Bee

Bees are very fashionable now.

An apiarist and conservationist I know once told me that honeybees are the most farmed organism on Earth. I can well believe it. Just look at how many thousands call an individual hive home, and multiply that by how many hives you can fit into a small space.

Honeybees are not under threat

I’m afraid when people start going on about saving the bees I ask which bees? Here in the UK we have around 270 species of bee, and the European honeybee is unusual for being a fairly generalist species. Honeybees are able to thrive in a range of different habitats and forage on a wide range of plants. Other bees need very specific types of habitat, such as short grass for ground-nesting species and dead wood for others. In addition some bees can only forage on a specific shape of flower; those with very long tongues, for example, must forage on tubular flowers.

As long as most plants in the garden benefit nature you can be allowed a few indulgences

Yet there’s a whole load of money being made off things being good for the bees. Awkward questions are not allowed!

Awkward

There’s a certain awkwardness to the relationship between gardener and wildlife. I relish the inevitable arrival of a robin while I’m working, but in summer I must be quick to squash horseflies before they give me a painful bite.

Horseflies like long grass, as do ticks. Nasty bitey buggers that prey on tasty gardeners. I’d rather hoped that I was too gristly and tough for them now, but no. Long grass is bad news for me, but long grass is valuable habitat for a range of insects, amphibians, reptiles and small mammals.

If only deer would stay away from gardens

If I want the good things I must also put up with the bad.

I’m not quite sure how deer fit in to this equation. We have rather a lot of deer in the UK now; their numbers have swollen thanks to good seasons and increased distaste towards shooting them. We lack apex predators that can control them naturally, so the only non-firearm control tends to come when they step out in front of vehicles. I never see them in some gardens but in others they will come right up to the house.

Cute And Fluffy?

We’re supposed to think of nature as a benevolent force that we work alongside, but the uncomfortable truth is that some bits of nature are profoundly unhelpful. There’s an awful lot of nature that is neither good nor bad too.

We should probably hang up our trowels and let nature do its thing. Some plants will be obliterated and some will survive.

Rabbit guards are a necessary nuisance in some gardens

Gardens are not natural. It doesn’t matter how many native plants you grow or how much you tend your garden to benefit nature, a garden is in no way at all a replacement for proper wild habitats. This is not meant to discourage anyone from their efforts, but is instead something we need to be aware of.

Creating a wildlife haven in a barren wasteland is only minimally helpful. What’s needed are wildlife corridors, where whole neighbourhoods make gardens that are beneficial to insects, mammals and so on. In so many cases a street might have one or two enthusiastic gardeners keen to fill their gardens with lots of different plants, while all the neighbours just keep to lawns and a few bushes.

We can only do what we can do. Grow what we can, try to garden in a way that, although not entirely helpful, does nature the least harm.

Bumblebees are under threat

But can deer, and rabbits just stay out in the fields please? Is it too much to ask that we don’t have the onslaught of large herbivores to contend with?

And likewise the biting insects. I know the horseflies that try to bite me while I’m working are just trying to survive, but their chances of survival would be much higher if they didn’t come and try their luck; my record was 111 horseflies squashed in one day, and I’m up for breaking that record…