Declining insect populations are of serious concern, but there’s so much we can do – and it all starts in our gardens, says Monty
If you are an insect in hungry search of nourishment, Longmeadow seems to be the place to be. And that, beyond any plaudits from viewers, visitors or pundits, is the best measure of our garden.
I love to listen to the bees as they greedily go about their business, collecting pollen and nectar. The hives are in the orchard so the honeybees don’t have to travel far for food but there are hundreds – no, thousands – of different kinds of insect all over the garden, feeding busily and pollinating my plants.
It doesn’t just look nice – it gives me and my family limitless pleasure, which I know many of you share. But that’s as nothing, compared to the sound of all those busy insects going about their life-saving business.
It is not just their lives that they’re saving – although I am sure that if such a thing as consciousness is part of their makeup, they are focused solely on their own existence. But, as reports have shown, our insect populations are desperately reduced.
Back to life
Agriculture has spent the past 75 years or so focusing on maximum production and profit at the expense of the environment. Our back gardens are becoming the last bastion for too many creatures. Not all these creatures are glamorous but every last one is important. It is reaching crisis point and we (that’s you, me, every one of us) have to own this problem and be part of the solution. Because, beyond wishing for as diverse a range of life on this planet as we can, we won’t have the food crops we humans need to survive without these pollinating insects. It is as simple and stark as that.
This will not happen overnight. You won’t find supermarket shelves are suddenly bare next week because the bee population in California has become dangerously low – which it has. But these things creep and build until they become a crisis, when everyone says ‘something must be done’ – and by then it’s too late.
But it’s not too late, yet. Something we can all do is make our gardens, however small, a haven for wildlife of every kind. It is easy and beautiful and guarantees that your garden will be much, much healthier as a result.
