Magical Creatures: the Under-appreciated Role of Insects in Our Gardens

Gabiann Marin 02/08/2024

greengrocer cicada

The cicada is a well-known Australian insect which announces summer. (Photo: Creative Commons)

Story by Gabiann Marin

There is an army of hard-working environmental warriors all around us: in soil, on plants, in the air and in the water. Insects are our hidden allies. They protect, develop and maintain our natural environments, and yet their contribution is so often misunderstood, ignored or actively maligned.

Key Points:

  • Healthy soils and abundant gardens rely on a diversity of insects.
  • Broad spectrum pesticides eradicate all beneficial insects as well as having a negative and even deadly effect on other creatures.
  • Dr Kate Umbers and the organisation Invertebrates Australia are working to help educate communities to eradicate pesticides and appreciate insects and their contributions to human and environmental health.

You can have a thriving, beautiful garden, without pesticides, by simply restoring your garden’s natural balance.

Sure, no one likes to get a mozzie bite, and the idea of having a tick on us might make many people shiver in disgust: but each and every insect in our environment has an important purpose, even if we can’t see it.

Springwood resident Dr Kate Umbers, Senior Lecturer in Zoology at Western Sydney University, is someone who does see the magic and beauty in our invertebrates, dedicating her life to studying and helping to conserve them.

gold christmas beetle

Australian Christmas Beetles have suffered declines in recent years. (Photo courtesy Invertebrates Australia)

“I am very lucky to live in the Blue Mountains,” Kate says, “because it’s an absolute refugium in a wasteland of urban sprawl to the east, and agricultural intensification to the west. A little green sanctuary; little relative to the size of Australia, but it’s a relatively large patch overall. Probably there are species of insect here that are nowhere else. But you know, nobody knows, because we just haven’t spent enough time looking at insects in general. But I think the Blue Mountains are like a representative of what diversity would have existed across all of Sydney if we had kept it more in its natural state.”

Dr Kate Umbers, zoologist at wsu

Dr Kate Umbers wants to help change the way we think about insects in our gardens (Photo courtesy Dr Kate Umbers)

Although Kate has a doctorate in Zoology, she quickly began specialising in invertebrates, particularly insects, because, as she herself states, “That’s where all the real discoveries can be found.”

Indeed, despite making up the vast majority of animal life on earth, insects are poorly researched and remain somewhat misunderstood more generally, particularly in the public sphere.

“In Australia, there are probably about 300,000 different species of insect but only about 100,000 of those even have a formal description. So we don’t even know what is out there.” Dr Umbers sighs as she explains that her own research has had to shift from looking at the macro populations to focus on those insects which are in most need of protection. “I’ve started just focusing on species conservation and wondering which ones are in the most trouble. And how we can motivate people to care about them.”

Invertebrates make up a staggering 95% of animal species on Earth. If we only focus on recording observations of birds and mammals, or even reptiles, or frogs, we only get the picture that represents 5% of all animals. And that means that we’re probably not thinking about insects and insect conservation in a way that is likely to lead to good outcomes for all animals, including humans.

a bee

Recent interest in bee colony conservation has helped change the way we view insects more generally (Photo: Creative Commons)

Insects in decline

Recently, information about bee colony collapses and the decline of Christmas beetle numbers in Australia have started to make news and there is more interest in doing something to help these animals, but Kate believes that focusing just on one species will not solve the bigger problems that insect declines could cause.

All species of insects have a key role in the health of our planet, providing invaluable assistance in everything from pollination of flowers and aerating and maintaining healthy soil, to eradicating waste and litter in the natural environment; and of course, providing an important food source for other animals in the food chain.

Natural waste removers

Insects are natural waste removers and could be a huge ally in confronting the current problem of ever-increasing organic waste. Backyard worm farms and compost bins have been providing individual household solutions for decades, but it has now been shown that insects are able to deal with industrial and community waste issues.

Fly larvae can eat high levels of organic waste. These maggots can eat through waste in specially designed containers before developing into adult black soldier flies.

The black soldier fly larvae convert organic waste into high-quality nutrients for pet foods, fish and poultry feeds, without any emission creation. Once the fly has matured through its own lifecycle it is added to the highly nutrient rich soil by-product which nourishes plants and gardens. It’s an elegant and effective idea. Find out more here.

Black Soldier Fly Larvae are amazing organic waste managers and are starting to be utilised in large waste reduction projects. (Photo: Creative Commons)

The problem with pesticides

Insects get a lot of bad press. Even as the world is starting to understand the importance of thriving bee populations, the idea that most other insects are simply pests continues to dominate our thinking, leading to some truly concerning household and industrial responses to their existence: including mass use of broad spectrum pesticides.

Broad spectrum pesticides don’t discriminate, killing every insect that may visit your garden, which ironically can lead to an increase in the less beneficial insects like flies, mozzies and cockroaches. This is because the best way to keep insects in check is to have a healthy balanced garden ecosystem where the insects, birdlife and mammals all work together to create a system which is beneficial to all animals and plant species.

By knocking this system out of balance through spraying pesticides across our rose bushes or lawns, the overall health of the garden diminishes. Disastrous events like the recent deaths of hundreds of native crayfish in Hazelbrook have been linked to pesticide accidents.

dead crayfish in hazelbrook

Dead crayfish found after the bifenthrin contamination at a tributary to Hazelbrook Creek, 2023. (Photo: Amy St Lawrence)

To try and help promote the reduction and ultimate eradication of broad spectrum insecticides, Kate and her colleagues at Invertebrates Australia have developed the No Spray Spring initative. “Every year we run a campaign that helps educate everyone about the negative effects of pesticides, and promotes more natural and healthier alternatives to spraying,” Kate explains.

Getting people to give up their pesticides has proven tricky, as the major challenge to promoting insect conservation is the highly developed instinct by most to equate insects with something negative, dirty or dangerous.

“Most people don’t think about it, they just react. Whether it’s, ‘I don’t want it on me’, ‘I don’t want it in my house, or in my garden’, people determine good and bad insects in ways they don’t with other animal types.” But the whole idea of good and bad bugs is probably a bit misguided, Kate suggests, “as every insect has a necessary role in the ecosystem.”

The 5 minute pet

One cool concept Kate has suggested to try and combat this instinctive negative reaction is to think of insects not as invaders to the home or garden, but as what Kate calls “The 5 minute pet”. The idea is when you encounter an insect, instead of trying to kill it, allow yourself to watch it for a few minutes.

butterfly

Watching insects in our surroundings and thinking of them as our ‘5 minute pets’ can help remove the prejudice we often feel against them.  (Photo: Creative Commons)

“Just sit to see what it does,” Kate suggests. “It doesn’t have to be five minutes, but just sit with it for even 30 seconds or a minute. It’s the same as sitting with any anxiety really, to try to pull that reactivity down. Gather some real data about how the world works around you. These insects aren’t out to get you. They are just doing their thing, hanging out, and probably doing you a service you didn’t even realise they were doing.”

Insects as wildlife

The 5 minute pet isn’t the only way to develop your appreciation for the insects around you. Remember how exciting it is to have a lorikeet or a koala visit your garden. Sharing your space with a wild animal is an amazing experience. Well, insects are wildlife too. Having a native bee buzzing around the lilly pilly or a brightly coloured butterfly fluttering through the vegetable garden can be an extraordinary and simple way to connect with nature.

“Try to reframe insects as wild animals, wildlife, you know, not pests and bugs, not infiltrating your world, but visiting you in your garden; giving you a wonderful opportunity to see a wild creature in its natural habitat,” Kate suggests.

Dr Umbers reminds us that having wildlife in our gardens is a wonderful gift, and insects are wildlife just like possums, wallabies or turtles. (Photo: Creative Commons)

By normalising the existence of insects around us, we are less likely to automatically react with a negative response. We could start to appreciate the joys of sitting and having a cup of coffee and watching a butterfly visit a flower and maybe begin to understand that our desire for a perfectly manicured garden isn’t a justification for the significant damage to biodiversity pesticides are causing.

“By appreciating the role and importance of every insect in our garden we might be willing to say, well, you know, maybe I won’t get 2 kilos of tomatoes this year, maybe I’ll get 1.8 kilos, but I’ll be maintaining the biodiversity of not just my garden but the whole of the National Park where I love to live. So maybe that’s a pretty good trade-off,“ Kate suggests.

jewel beetle

Jewel Beetles are like works of art in the garden. (Photo: Creative Commons)

Take Action:

  • Eradicate the use of insecticides, particularly one-spray-kills-all broad spectrum pesticides. If you want to have a thriving beautiful garden, this can be achieved without pesticides, simply by allowing the natural balance to come back. If you must use any, limit the use to small amounts carefully directed in specific areas.
  • Use natural barriers rather than insecticides. Food crops and flowers can be protected through nettings or natural barriers, such as egg shells or coffee grounds at the stems of plants to stop snails, caterpillars and other insects from eating your plants.
  • Plant a diversity of flowers. All insects benefit from an array of flowers. Native is the best option but any flowering plant will provide food for a variety of pollinators and beneficial insects. Having flowers that bloom across different seasons will help sustain hoverflies and other insects who are active in the colder months.
  • Create natural garden areas. Lawns are insect deserts and also soak up a huge amount of water, so keeping them to a minimum will save you money and help support native insects and other animals. Keeping parts of your garden as natural as possible will provide food and shelter for insects and help them flourish.
  • Allow leaf litter and fallen branches to remain on the ground to provide habitat.

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This story has been produced as part of a Bioregional Collaboration for Planetary Health and is supported by the Disaster Risk Reduction Fund (DRRF). The DRRF is jointly funded by the Australian and New South Wales governments.

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About Gabiann Marin

Gabiann has worked as in-house writer/editor for Amnesty International, Greenpeace and Médecins Sans Frontières across Australia, Africa and the Asia Pacific. She is an award winning novelist and children’s book author, having won or been shortlisted for several Australian and international writing prizes. She was one of the key designers and the writer of the award-winning multimedia interactive narrative, Kids Together Now, which focuses on helping children deal with issues around bullying and racism. In addition to her role as storyteller for the Planetary Health Initiative, she tutors in narrative and writing at Macquarie University and works as a writer, story developer and script producer.

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