Aphids, Earwigs & Allies: Insect Week with the RHS

Gardening with the RHS

Royal Horticultural Society

Home & Garden, Leisure, Hobbies

4.4 • 654 Ratings

🗓️ 26 June 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week we’re diving head-first into the long grass, under the flowerpots, and behind the compost bin to celebrate National Insect Week! The Wildlife Trusts’ collaborator and garden designer Zoe Claymore shares her top tips on wildlife friendly gardening. RHS Principal Entomologist Dr Hayley Jones will be busting some myths around one critter which has been dominating our gardens this year – aphids! And another RHS entomologist – Josie Stuart – explains why earwigs are excellent insect predators to encourage into your plot. Host: Gareth Richards Contributors: Zoe Claymore, Dr Hayley Jones, Josie Stuart Links: Buddleja aphids Buddleja aphid survey Aphids Earwigs

Transcript

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0:00.0	Get your tickets for the greatest show in Earth at an RHS garden near you.
0:05.1	Where nature puts on an unforgettable performance of colour and fragrance.
0:09.3	The scenery changes many times in one season and our finest trees will happily play the part of...
0:14.7	The best hiding place ever.
0:17.4	Booth!
0:18.2	Put your day out of dreams in the hands of the experts.
0:21.6	It's the greatest show in Earth.
0:23.7	At an RHS garden near you.
0:25.5	Book tickets online for discounts, plus under fives go free and under 16 to five pounds.
0:36.0	There's a quiet drama unfolding just beyond your back door.
0:40.3	A world of shimmering wings and silent hunts, of tender care and ruthless survival,
0:45.3	a place where the intimate struggles of life, courtship, birth and death,
0:49.3	have played out not on the African savannah or in the depths of the rainforest,
0:53.3	but in the shade beneath your roses, along the cracks in your patio, or deep in the heart of your compost heap.
1:01.1	Here dragonflies patrol the skies with jet-like precision, dung beetles quietly recycle life back
1:06.6	into the soil, and clusters of blackfly feed fledgling blue tits from the shadows beneath the leaves.
1:12.6	These aren't just background characters. They're the workforce of the garden.
1:18.6	The pollinators, decomposers, predators and prey that keep ecosystems ticking, but many of them are slipping from sight.
1:26.6	In Britain we've lost an alarming 60% of our flying insects in just but many of them are slipping from sight.
1:32.8	In Britain, we've lost an alarming 60% of our flying insects in just the last two decades,
1:35.7	according to a study by Bug Life and the Kent Wildlife Trust.
1:37.2	The causes are many.
	...

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