First published: BCnature Summer 2026; Vol. 64, No.2; Updated: June 25, 2026
Here is a suggestion, a recommendation, an antidote to the dismay you might feel when thinking about values, and choices, and consequences of our activities in the world. Some decisions are difficult, or expensive, or require everyone to participate, so we may feel like tiny drops in the bucket of progress.
But we can make a difference, a big difference, in a very short time, by gardening with native plants. Every increment of the native plant component in a garden helps, and the greater the proportion of native plants, the greater the help.
Now, there is rewilding, which is about restoring landscapes to a natural, wild-type form and function. And then there is gardening with native plants. I can’t pursue rewilding; my urge to garden is too strong. I want to sculpt my garden, placing large things here, and small things there, creating spaces that elicit feelings as you look in or walk through. Even when I was farming, working in landscape-scale settings, I felt like I was gardening, using fences and livestock to create a large living sculpture.
But a garden is not really working until it is full of insects. Just last week I visited a large formal garden with friends who were visiting. In past, and again this time, I was disappointed by the lifeless quality of this garden; there are so few insects there. How do you describe a garden with almost no insects?
Can you call it “dead”? Even though it is full of colourful flowers? It feels so to me.
And apparently also to my guests; as we wended our way around long paths, admiring these flowers and those, and the artful color combinations, the gentleman, a kindly man not given to strong words, quietly questioned the seemingly low numbers of insects. I agreed with him, lightening the observation with “well, it has been cold…”
To my sensibility these traditional-looking gardens, be they large landscape gardens or small beds alongside buildings, are functionally dead when they support few insects. It is like visiting a children’s playground, with climbing structures and slides and swings, but all is quiet because there are no children to play there.
But when we plant native plants, that evolved here with whole suites of insects, a garden comes alive. And particularly when keystone native plants – those that support the greatest numbers of insect species – are used, the change is revolutionary.
If your goal is to create something new and eye catching, you might plant woolly sunflowers (Eriophyllum lanatum). They make knee-high masses of bright yellow for weeks in late spring. Even on cloudy days I swear they glow. And they are alive with activity; pollinators in wide variety use the long-lasting flowers, attracting predators who lurk within, like invisible color-matched crab spiders, ready to pounce. Some bees, males I suspect, patrol back and forth, back and forth, looking for females maybe, or for rivals to body slam, driving them away. Even better, woolly sunflowers support many caterpillar species. It is caterpillars that birds like wrens and chickadees need to successfully raise babies.
If your goal is a leafy green ground cover, maybe to replace ivy or periwinkle, native wild strawberries (Fragaria sp.) could be perfect, making a similar leafy green ground cover, but one that supports many caterpillars. You can see why earlier gardeners, even recently, thought ivy and periwinkle were good choices; they grow aggressively, crowding out weeds, making a carpet of dark green. But they belong to other ecosystems, where they evolved and they fit. They do not fit into the ecosystems here; they do not support insects. They make playgrounds with no children.
Some of those missing “children” are the birds that would eat the caterpillars, if the plants supported them. When we replace these functionally dead plants with the right native plants, caterpillars come back, as do the birds that eat them.
The Oak Bay Garden Club has just begun a project to remove periwinkle from garden beds around Monterey Centre, planting instead native strawberries and kinnikinnick (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi). As we have begun the work of removing periwinkle we’ve been struck by how few creatures we find in the soil, and in the above ground stems and leaves. As the strawberries and kinnikinnick become established, that will change. Insects will rebound, and birds will as well.