Learning about Beneficial Insects in the Creation Garden

The Creation Garden should start with insects, which will have a profound effect on the final outcome, perhaps turning the gardener into an etymologist. This video wobbles around a lot, but the content is good. The topic demands Hollywood studio equipment to zoom in on the wee little creatures without scaring them away.

Most people would like a neater garden than the one displayed, but the principles are the same. If gardeners plan for beneficial insects and spiders, they will decrease pest damage to almost zero, without cost and without man-made toxins.

The names are enough to make anyone dizzy at first. How do I know which plants to encourage for which beneficials? The answer is simple - encourage some and let God sort out the feeding and breeding.

1. Never use pesticides in the garden. Weed-killers and fungicides are also discouraged. The only exceptions for weed-killers would be an obnoxious public nuisance, like Poison Ivy, Giant Hogweed, or Poison Hemlock.
2. Every member of the carrot family is friendly to beneficials, including carrots blooming in their second year. The carrot flowers in the video look like Queen Ann's Lace, which is called Wild Carrot. Some would yank the QAL in the yard. I encourage it and plant more along the margins.
3. Plants with a distinctive fragrance and tiny flowers attract the best insects, albeit without producing photogenic flowers. Such plants are beautiful with a macro lens: Borage and Mint families.
4. Most plants in the herb section are attractive to beneficials.
5. A plant can be big and ugly, like Comfrey, yet make up for its bulk and plain appearance by producing hundreds of flowers for butterflies and bees.

Unusual and Fun Plants

Most of us have a basic knowledge of plants, and we look for old favorites, which remind us of the past. Here are some examples of new plants that surprised me, several from Almost Eden next door.

Joe Pye Weed

I kept hearing this name and finding the plant gone later in the season. Finally I ordered two and saw them reach a respectable size the first year. Beware of such a modest start. The second year it reached its full size, blooming at 6 - 7 feet, with large lavender flowers. The plant smelled like foot cream but the flowers are more like vanilla. In the first and second years, butterflies and beneficials always flocked around it and flew away from the bloom. Late in the season it can look old and weedy, true to its name, but new plant and flower growth continue. Always order this one early.

Clethra - Summer Sweet - Cinnabon Shrub - Prima Donna

I obtained two of these from Almost Eden and moved them to the rose garden once Chaste Tree elbowed them aside. This one is a star and deserves a place of honor. It grows about 5 feet tall and blooms later in the season, like Joe Pye. When I bumped its flowers in the past, tiny insects would exit, almost like pixie dust. After I gave the two shrubs a spotlight in the front, I noticed the shrub's unique sweet cinnamon fragrance. If I forget the shrub, a damp breeze from the garden reminds me of its star status.

Chaste Tree - Medicine Shrub 

This shrub loves the sun, hates being watering, comes alive from pruning, and smells like lineament. Twice I did my extra one wrong. Twice I went back to the directions and pruned it back hard. Both times a sickly or dead shrub burst into leaves again. This one will grow rather big for the garden but can be pruned easily. Its pure blue flowers are adored by bumble bees, so its constant supply and unusual looks are enhanced by the constant motion of the bees. Its oil is sold for a very high price.

Monarch Butterfly Rest Stop

Want Butterflies? Grow Their Favorite Flowers and Vegetation. Concentrate the Attractions

I tried to move a Chaste Tree to the front yard, without getting the soil moist enough for a gentle digging. Memo to self - Chaste Trees get very attached to their original locations.

I learned my lesson and soaked the Clethra and its new location. Digging it up with a soil ball and installing it in the rose garden went fast. I did that with help and also discovered the second Clethra, which proved "Out of sight, out of mind." It became a part of a solid wall of green in the bird feeding area.

 Clethra is also called Summersweet. Tapping the flower will yield a bunch of tiny insects, which like tiny flowers. Butterflies seem to favor those small flowers which people would never grow for a bouquet, so they are treated to a variety of butterfly displays instead.

I repeated the Clethra move this morning, after soaking it last night in buckets of rainwater. I moved the this one into the wheelbarrow easily, with a rootball, and found a good place among the roses for it. If I want a plant to prosper, I put it where I will see it all the time. The rose garden never lacks color, whether from mints, Crepe Myrtle, Joe Pye, daisies, hostas, or the milkweed family.

I am catching onto butterfly gardening. The Butterfly Weed bloomed and formed Milkweed like pods for the seeds. One opened up today and the seeds headed off on the breeze.

Since Clethra is known for its attraction to butterflies, I decided to move it where it would thrive with more sun and with Joe Pye blooming nearby.

I have bags of Stinky Peat in the limo trunk, so I pulled out a couple of bags and dumped them on top of the Clethra base and on the Chaste Tree's final resting place. Peat Compost is only $1.60 a bag and remains my favorite for planting. If the project does not work out, I have improved the soil in that spot.

 Bumble Bees adore the Chaste Tree. The oil is sold on the herbal market. The leaves have a definite medicinal aroma.

God has a plan for every living thing. That is clear from moving a few things around and planting some new, unual flowers and shrubs I never head about before. Creation Gardeners know how little they do for the garden. The schedules are already set up for blooming, reproduction, support of butterflies and birds.

Every gardener has an enemies list of destructive bugs. Mine is short - Japanese beetles and aphids. This year I saw little of both, because the good creatures kept them down and Milky Spore got to the grubs before they romanced, chewed, and reproduced in the roses.

My Facebook friend found tetanus in her soil in the microbiology lab. I replied, "But there are also antiobiotics in the soil. Otherwise death in the soil would poison us all."

Even false teachers have their purpose. They show that figs do not grow on thistles, or grapes on thorns. They make the difference between sound and toxic doctrine clear, if only we pay attention to the Word of God.

 My father, born in 1910, would say, "You have to buy milkweeds now?" I would say, "For the Monarchs, yes."