The Web

Douglas W. Tallamy
Most people garden because they love plants, but i garden because i love animalsall kinds of animals. Animals with two legs (birds), four legs (box turtles, salamanders, and foxes), six legs (butterflies and beetles), eight legs (spiders), dozens of legs (centipedes), hundreds of legs (millipedes), and even animals with no legs (snakes and pollywogs). i admit that i am not evenhanded or commonplace in my love of animals: birds get the nod over rabbits, groundhogs, and deer; and i appreciate the extraordinary diversity and importance of insects more than most gardeners do. its not that i dont appreciate the beauty of plants; i certainly do. And i am grateful for their ability to sequester carbon, filter and store water, clean and cool air, build and hold soil, and make the oxygen that i breathe every minute of every day.

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but i like plants mostly for what they do for my precious animals. The plants in my garden make the food that enables all the animals in our yard to exist. Those plants make the leaves that feed hundreds of species of caterpillars. They produce the pollen that enables dozens of species of bees to reproduce in our yard and the nectar that fuels the flight of at least thirty species of butterflies and skippers. Our garden plants provide the seeds that supply the needs of large and small beetle species and the leaf litter that enriches and protects the diverse communities of life within our soil. And the plants that my wife and i have added to our property have, in a few short years, increased the number of breeding bird species from eleven to well over fifty. At least fifteen additional avian species can now use our garden as a place to rest and refuel during their spring and fall migrations. i garden the way i gardenwith a heavy bias toward plants that have been part of local food webs for millenniabecause that is the only way the natural world i love is able to thrive in our yard. When we moved to our propertypart of an abandoned hay fieldit was overrun with invasive Asian plants. i knew that in order to see local animals, we would have to restore their habitat and the food webs that sustain them. Hence, our use of plants that share the suns energy with other creatures. encouraging animals that feed on our plants does not

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endanger the garden. native insects attracted to the garden provide the food for many animals that eat insects the minute parasitic wasps that reproduce within the eggs of stink bugs and caterpillars, the larger wasps that develop within the bodies of caterpillars and beetles, the assassin bugs and ambush bugs that help control fall webworms and treehoppers, the damsel bugs that eat plant bug eggs, the jumping spiders that pounce on unsuspecting leafhoppers, the viruses that turn caterpillars into mush, the big-headed flies that make sure we dont have too many planthoppers, the small-headed flies that make sure we dont have too many spiders, the thick-headed flies that make sure we dont have too many paper wasps, and above all, the birds, which eat insects from dawn to dusk. Gardening with native plants has been criticized as little more than an emotional longing for a romanticized past. Although i have defended my preference for native plants many times, with both science and what seems to me like common sense (animals need to eat), there is no denying that i am motivated by emotion. To watch the daily lives of other species, and to know that these creatures survive because of my gardening choices, brings me feelings of accomplishment, satisfaction, joy, and wonder, and even an occasional paternal glow. A blooming crape myrtle seen against a blue sky is undeniably beautiful; a weeping blue atlas cedar, its

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branches sweeping the ground, is striking; and forsythia is a remarkably reliable herald of spring. Yet these plants do not support the food webs of north America, and when there is no food, animals must go elsewhere to live. i take satisfaction in knowing that, with so few elsewheres left, animals can find food and shelter in our yard. besides, in my mind, crape myrtles are not as beautiful as the cecropia moth that develops on my native cherry trees; a blue atlas cedar cant match the magic of the bolas spider, which mimics the sex pheromone of its moth prey in order to attract them to its sticky bolas. And nothing is as dependable as the blue grosbeak male that sings at the top of my white pine at

7 a.m. every day from June through August because he

has enough food to support a mate and raise his family. i garden the way i garden because i would not be whole without these creatures in my life.

DOUGL As W. TA L L A MY teaches at the University of Delaware, in newark. He is a professor and the chair of the entomology and wildlife ecology department there, where he has been studying insects and their role in the environment for more than twenty years. He is the author of Bringing Nature Home.

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