Garden Allies - a book review

Timber Press kindly sent me a copy of this book to review and I am late getting to it. I did write a review for the HPSO Quarterly which will appear in the next issue.

I did not wish repeat that review (I'm sure the quarterly would not like that either!). Instead, I thought I would share some fascinating tidbits I discovered while reading the book.

The book, written by Frederique Lavopierre, the former director of education at Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, profiles “the pollinators, decomposers, and other organisms that are part of any thriving garden”. Beginning with the earth dwellers (earthworms, roly-polys) and moving on to winged insects (beetles, butterflies), she explains how they all work together to build and protect our gardens by enriching the soil to keeping predators at bay.

Did you know -

• Earthworms eat their weight in soil and organic matter daily
• 30% of crops rely on honeybees for pollination
• 1/5 of all life on earth are beetles
• Ladybugs can eat 5,000 aphids during their lifetime
• The best way to attract winged garden allies to the garden is to add plants in the aster, parsley, mint, mustard and rose families
• Monarch butterflies feed on only one plant - milkweed; Pipevine Swallowtail feed only on Dutchman's Pipe Vine
• Don't waste money buying ladybugs - they almost always fly away from your garden upon release. Instead provide habitat to insure their survival by using leaf mulch, groundcovers and perennial bunch grasses
• German chamomile is an excellent plant to have in the garden as it attracts numerous garden allies
• Praying mantis have a voracious appetite and sometime even eat each other when newly hatched
• Spiders eat more insects than birds and bats combined
• A single brown bat can catch up to 1200 insects per hour 

The list goes on but that is just a sampling of the fascinating information contained in the book. 

Wonderfully enlightening and educating, the book demonstrates how important insects are in the garden, even those that most of us shun. It also reinforces the importance of not using chemicals. Doing so not only kills beneficial insects but also others that prey on them. The author also suggests plants that will attract certain insects as well as ways to increase their habitat.

The book is beautifully illustrated with line drawings by Craig Latker.

 

Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy