The beginnings of a green-thumbed life are barely detectable. It’s a backyard climbing tree, a beloved patch of local bushland, or maybe a dramatic teenage friendship with the strange cactus on your windowsill (a gift from your mum, probably). However, within a few short years of taking a vague interest in plants you look up from your stupor – pausing the very real conversation you were just having with your kiwi vines – and realise that all the furniture has been rearranged to face the garden, and it must have been you who did it, at some point. You try to put your cup of tea down to take it all in, but you can’t, because every surface is covered in plant-matter or books pertaining to plant-matter. So why do we get so hooked?

One of the great pleasures of creating a garden is watching it take on a life of its own, humming with insects. The sheer number and diversity is astounding - from the noisy Blue Banded Bees visiting the cup-shaped flowers of Bulbine bulbosa to the tiny, iridescent Cuckoo Wasps searching for a safe place to nest, it’s a joy to pause and observe as they go about their day. Aside from the beauty and interest they bring to our gardens and landscapes, insects play many critical ecosystem functions…

There are so many reasons to love gardening. It literally grounds you as you become aware of the world around you and your place in it, forcing you to slow down to observe and participate in a system that is both beautiful and complex. It’s inevitable that gardeners love the creatures who live in and visit their garden, as they are a constant source of wonder and a critical part of a healthy system…