Visitors are Welcome in my Garden

Build it and they will come, and did they ever, everything from a wild turkey to an opossum, and all kinds of creepers and flyers. Thirty-five years ago, my current garden was a typical suburban lawn. Lawns are perfect for kids to play on and dogs to run, and mine accommodated both at times, but it wasn’t long before the vegetable garden and a couple of flowerbeds went in. Those flowerbeds became a floral amoeba, bulging out, expanding and encircling the lawn until today there’s barely enough to keep a rabbit fed for a week. If they’d stick to the lawn, they’d be welcome.

I filled the flowerbeds with all manner of plants that thrived or died over the years as I experimented. I made my share of mistakes, planting things that behaved as though they owned the place. And then wildlife arrived that thought the same way.

I receive a lot of visitors, most of whom I welcome. I don’t much care for the slugs and snails, aphids, and mosquitos, but even they have a role to play, if only as a link in the food chain. I’ve had herons, groundhogs, raccoons, and recently an opossum that surprised me in the vegetable garden. I froze and it played dead until we both decided to go our separate ways.

Because my garden has never seen pesticides, I like to think all my critters are healthy. Only a few years ago it was the norm to spray everything that creeped or crawled without a thought to the importance of these creatures. However, most are beneficial in some way, as food for another or as a pollinator of plants. Some might not be so welcome, such as plant eating aphids, and yet even they’re food for ladybugs. The caterpillar or other insect that devours leaves is often a source of food for birds, especially when they’re also feeding bugs to their chicks. We might not like the less desirables, but without them we won’t have the ones we love to see, the colourful birds and butterflies.

My garden might be primarily for plants, but there’s a whole other world within it. There are hoards of essential creatures that dwell in the soil, at the bottom of the food chain that eventually links to us. It’s the bigger, visible ones that intrigue me. I often see something that is as interesting as the plants I grow. There are curious beetles that scurry beneath the leaf litter, unusual spiders, hoverflies, lacewings, butterflies, and some of the four hundred species of bees found in Ontario. All are feeding on plants and on each other, each one filling an important role in the ecosystem that is my garden.

My garden might be an oasis for me, but today I like to think it’s a haven for wildlife, too, and I’m happy with that. I might step out to inspect a flower only to discover a rare bug or an unusual bee or be startled by hummingbirds zooming in. Sometimes I’ll catch a glimpse of something furry and remember that it’s probably keeping the slug and snail population under control. In the pond are three frogs that help, keeping an eye on the water beetles and dragonflies during the day before going out on night patrol.

With a greater knowledge of the importance of wildlife in all forms, especially the ones that inhabit a garden, gardeners are now taking a different approach by adding more native plants to support beneficial insects. With a wide range of plants, a water feature, and an acceptance of the essential creatures that occupy a garden it is possible to create a balance where one group keeps a nervous watch on the other groups, with neither getting the upper hand. Nature was designed this way, to be in a state of equilibrium.

Yes, build it and they will come, but I really wasn’t expecting that opossum.