My childhood is riddled with nightmares about bugs.
Too many legs.
Too many eyes.
Too many bugs.
There was one time I went camping in the fourth grade. My parents had their own tent, and my siblings and I were in another.
Since all of us were in elementary school at the time, we really did not understand the concept of a bug screen and absolutely refused to keep it shut. Just out of sheer frustration from having to open it and close it every single time we left the tent.
I’m sure you can imagine where this is going.
Waking up at two in the morning in the woods with spiders and beetles crawling all over your face is enough to scare even the most hardened criminals.
I’ve grown a lot since that happened, and I owe it all to a simple change in mindset.
Turn that sense of fear into a sense of curiosity.
The more I learned about insects, the less scary they became.
I started sitting outside and watching all the different insects swarming towards my mother’s sedum. There would be hundreds of bugs flying and crawling around, all focused on this one plant. They didn’t care about me, they didn’t want to sting me, and they didn’t want to sneak into my room late at night and whisper horror stories in my ear.
It became a little game for me to play. Find a bug, figure out what it’s called.
It turned insects from creepy slimy creatures into recognizable friends.
Suddenly that weird looking thing went from a creature that crawled out of the depths of hell, to an Assassin Bug.
That evil beast flying at you at an alarming rate is actually a Giant Mayfly, and completely harmless.
It made my life a whole less terrifying.
And I want to do the same for you.
I’ve put together a short list of insects that might move in next door when you start your new native garden. They might instill fear either through the way they look, or through what they do to plants.
Don’t worry, the following are just images and can’t actually hurt you!
If you’re considering a native garden, you might already know that planting milkweeds will help to save the monarchs.
But did you know about the Red Milkweed Beetle?
This is a fascinating creature that has come up with its own unique way of dealing with the toxins in milkweeds.
You see, as beautiful as milkweed flowers are, they are also highly toxic. Most insects and animals know not to go near it.
But not these little guys!
Red Milkweed Beetles are only somewhat resistant to the toxins, which means if they eat too much, they could still be in serious trouble. To combat this, they will bite a little hole in the veins and stem so that the sap leaks out, crawl to the top of the leaf, and then begin enjoying their tasty snack. This lessens the amount of sap they consume and therefore lessens the amount of toxins.
Like many other insects that enjoy milkweed, they are brightly colored to ward off predators. The red color lets birds know that they ingest toxins, and that they won’t be a tasty snack.
Growing up, my favorite summertime activity was finding old cicada skins, sneaking around my house, creeping up on my brother and gently placing it on his shoulder without him noticing, then proceeding to yell “Oh my god, what is that?!” at the top of my lungs.
It might not have been his favorite summertime activity.
Cicadas are wonderful creatures because they are the dopiest little things you have ever met.
They’re totally clumsy, they’re not afraid of humans, and they wreak absolute havoc on anyone who stands too close.
Magic Cicadas are the longest living insects, but they spend most of that time underground. We see them for a total of about 4-6 weeks during their entire 13 or 17 year long life span.
As a form of protection, they all emerge at the same time. This is known as “predator satiation.” The basic logic is, “they can’t possibly eat all of us.” That way, some will still live to go back underground.
This is a fun neighbor to have, as long as you don’t mind if they blast music at all hours of the day.
Male cicadas will screech in bursts of about 15 seconds. With all of them doing it at the same time though, it’s just a never ending high pitched scream.
Ah. Aphids.
Little creatures that look more like a disease than an insect.
But don’t freak out! Aphids are an excellent source of food for insects like ladybugs, and usually the problem can be solved by just letting them take care of it for you.
They live entirely on a diet of sap, which is basically just sugar. These are the kinds of neighbors that would accidentally bake way too many cookies, but then just say what the hell and eat all of them in one sitting instead of sharing them with the lovely lady next door.
Since they eat almost nothing but sugar, it makes it really hard for them to get the nutrients that they need to survive, so they will consume a crazy amount of sap in a day.
All this extra sugar goes to waste, and they excrete it in enormous amounts. That’s why if you have a problem with aphids, your plants feel like they’re coated in a sticky tar.
My advice, don’t lend this neighbor any sugar.
If you find that you have a lot of grubs and beetles in your yard, then this wasp is your friend.
I know their stingers can be scary, but they are a wonderful neighbor to have when you get to know them. And that’s good news for gardeners.
They are like the new neighbor that moves in who’s covered in tattoos, rides a motorcycle, is easily ten times your size, but then when you meet them, they have a little Pomeranian that they like to dress up and take to dog shows on the weekend.
They will lay their larvae on top of a grub so that when it hatches, they can eat the grubs. It gives them a great source of protein and it helps your plants!
They are also fairly peaceful considering the size of their stingers. I have easily walked through gardens that are buzzing with Blue Winged Wasps, and they totally ignored me. They tend to be so focused on fulfilling their pollinator duties, that they don’t really care if their neighbor is walking through their yard. (Because at the end of the day our gardens belong to the insects, not to us).
If you want to see more of these interesting pollinators in your yard, their favorite foods are goldenrod and mountain mint.
When you’re just starting out with a new native garden, it’s easy to be stuck with old habits.
Growing up, if my mom saw holes in leaves, it was all hands on deck. Something was hurting her poor plants and we needed to get rid of it. For the sake of the plant.
But taking drastic measures to save the plants could harm special little guys like the Leaf Cutting Bee.
The Leaf Cutting Bee is a pollinator that likes to flop around to collect pollen. They are not gentle, they roll around in the pollen like a dog rolls in mud with their owner yelling at them in the distance.
This bee gets its name from the way it makes its nest. Unlike honeybees, Leaf Cutter Bees are usually solitary. They will bite out little circles or crescent shapes in leaves, and take them to a preexisting hole. They use the leaves kind of like doors to separate cells in their nests and to protect them from the outside.
Holes in your leaves are not the end of days. In fact, it’s usually a good sign that you are providing the necessary resources for important insects in your area.
Some insects are scary to look at. Some insects are scary to think about. Some we’re scared of just because of what they can do to our plants.
Okay… we’re doing it a little bit for ourselves.
Of course I’m going to want a beautiful garden that gets all the compliments from the garden grannies down the street. Of course I want a place that makes me feel at home and at peace.
But if that’s all I wanted, I could just pick up any pretty looking flower at the local Home Depot. If that’s all I wanted, I wouldn’t be committing to a native garden.
I’m committing to a native garden because I also want to feel like I can make a difference. I want to feel like I’m actually doing some good for the environment by providing food and shelter for countless little creatures. I want to feel like I’m doing my part to stop climate change.
That won’t happen if I’m hurting the one thing I’ve sworn to protect: the insects.
It’s easy to get caught up in the belief that those aphids are taking over the milkweeds and I have to stop them. I have to protect the milkweed at all costs.
But protect them from what? From the insects? From the things that eat the plants?
The whole point of going native is to feed them in the first place!
Holes in your plants are a good sign, bugs swarming your plants are a good sign, bunnies eating your flowers are a good sign.
It means that you are providing the resources necessary to sustain life.
And isn’t that what this is all about?
I want to have a garden that is completely overrun with insects. I want to be kept awake by all the buzzing and chirping and singing at night. That means that my garden is working.
It can be hard to see your favorite plant being sucked dry by the aphids. I understand that gardeners are putting their blood sweat and tears into making a beautiful garden. But at the end of the day, we need more than a beautiful garden. We need a garden that will support life.
And not just some insects. We need a garden that supports all insects.
We need to work towards creating a strong ecosystem. It’s not enough to just help the monarchs. That might be your reason for planting milkweed in the first place, but the world will not turn with just one butterfly to keep it going.
If we create a garden with diverse types of plants that can feed many many many different insects, then everything will work out in the end.
If you have too many aphids, lady bugs will come along to eat them. And then crows will come and eat the lady bugs. And foxes will eat the crows.
So many animals rely on insects that without them, the whole world will collapse in ways we can’t even begin to imagine.
It is a complex system that we have no hope of fully understanding. The best we can do is provide a strong base and hope that things will work out the same way they have been working for millions of years.
You might not like having insects in your garden, but I can guarantee you’re really not going to like what happens when they’re gone forever.
To do your part to help the insects, check out the native plants at Hickory Town Gardens.
