The Life in Your Garden: Gardening for Biodiversity
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Description
Gardeners can play a significant role in helping to sustain native plant diversity and providing refuge for threatened species of insects and sanctuary for birds, amphibians, reptiles, and small mammals.
Horticulture experts Reeser Manley and Marjorie Peronto share their own experiences in gardening for biodiversity, placing a strong emphasis on insect diversity as a bellwether of success. Insects comprise 60 percent of Earth’s biodiversity, and they deserve to be recognized as the creatures that run our gardens. It is not the gardener’s job to eliminate insects that munch on leaves, suck the sap from stems, bore holes in fruits, or graze on roots. This is the work of predatory insects and arachnids such as ladybug beetles, hoverfly larvae, praying mantises, certain wasps, and spiders. It is the gardener’s task to cultivate populations of these predators. The Life in Your Garden also describes the functional plants of a garden (with recommendations for understory trees and shrubs throughout North America) and their relationship with garden life, introducing the concept of a “garden insectary.”
ISBN
9780884484721
Publication Date
2016
Publisher
Tilbury House Publishers
City
Thomaston, ME
Keywords
Gardening, Garden ecology, Biodiversity conservation
Disciplines
Horticulture | Sustainability
Recommended Citation
Manley, Reeser and Peronto, Marjorie, "The Life in Your Garden: Gardening for Biodiversity" (2016). Faculty and Staff Monograph Publications. 276.
https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/fac_monographs/276