Asheville Garden Club

05/27/2026

She has fifty teeth, venom immunity, and the lowest body temperature of any mammal her size. Most people see her crossing the yard at midnight and assume the worst.

🌿 The opossum doesn't dig up gardens. She doesn't chew wiring. She doesn't start territory fights with the pets. She eats the slugs, the beetles, the grubs, and the fallen fruit — then disappears into the brush pile before sunrise.

She's the only marsupial in North America. Opposable thumbs on her hind feet. A prehensile tail that grips branches. And a body temperature so low that most viruses can't replicate in her system.

A brush pile in a quiet corner. That's the entire ask 🐾

05/27/2026

The ladybug on your tomato leaf has eaten thousands of aphids in her lifetime. Her larva — the black-and-orange alligator-shaped creature most people don't recognize — ate even more.

🌿 When threatened, she bleeds from her knee joints on purpose. The fluid contains alkaloids that taste terrible to predators. The bright red shell is a warning label that birds learn to avoid after one attempt.

Her wings fold underneath the shell using a mechanism so precise that engineers have studied it for spacecraft panel design. She opens them in a fraction of a second and closes them perfectly every time.

The garden's most recognizable insect is also the one most people know the least about 🐾

05/25/2026

Remembering with gratitude

05/23/2026

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=969789362471775&id=100083221613717

The ants on your peony buds aren't eating the flower. The flower invited them.

If you look at the outside of a peony bud — the green sepals wrapping the petals before they open — you'll see small glistening drops of liquid. That's nectar, produced by glands on the outside of the bud itself. Not inside the flower. On the wrapper 🌷

The peony is offering food to anything that shows up. And what shows up is ants.

A scout finds the nectar, lays a trail back to the colony, and within hours the bud is covered. They're not chewing. They're not tunneling. They're drinking.

While the ants feed, they defend the food source. Thrips, aphids, small beetles — anything that lands on the bud gets confronted by ants that are already there and already territorial about the sugar.

The plant provides the meal. The ants provide the security. Both sides benefit 🌿

Now the myth. You've probably heard that peonies need ants to open — that the ants "tickle the buds" or lick the nectar off so the petals can unfold. This has been repeated for generations.

It isn't true. Peonies bloom perfectly well without ants. The flower opens on its own. What the ants provide isn't mechanical help — it's protection from insects that would damage the petals before they get the chance to open.

🌱 When you see a peony bud crawling with ants this week:

- Don't spray them — they're not pests. They're the service the plant paid for
- Don't worry about them coming inside. They're interested in the nectar, not your kitchen. Once the bloom opens and the nectar dries, they leave
- And don't believe anyone who tells you the flower can't open without them. It can. It just opens with fewer holes when they're around

The ants aren't the problem. They're the security detail the peony hired with sugar 🌱

05/19/2026

Flies are important pollinators and should be welcome visitors to any garden. Hoverflies (or syrphid flies) love yellow flowers that provide easy access to pollen and nectar. Yellow daisy-family flowers, such as the southern ragwort (Packera anonyma), would be a great choice. To learn more about southern ragwort, go to the Plant Toolbox
https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/packera-anonyma/