Compassionate Gardening: A Small Change, A Big Impact

by Philip Kratz

(a) “A small mouse sitting inside a teapot” Image by Phil Robson.

There is potentially a lot of suffering in our gardens. Insects, rodents and many other smaller animals make their home in our gardens, and most of them die prematurely. They lead short lives with small chances to experience many positive mental states. We often want to allow natural processes to take their own course, even in gardens. But little do we think about the actual well-being of the affected individuals. This article will explore the reason for animal suffering in our gardens and how we can change that for the better.

This won’t be an easy topic since gardeners can be emotionally attached to their creations. However, this article aims to provide knowledge and practices that can expand your gardening skills in the future. Afterwards, you will be even more proud of your garden, its beauty and the compassion you fostered.  

So let us start with nature and how many of us view it. We associate nature with beauty, diversity, relaxation, hiking, diving, surfing and lots of other activities that we enjoy.  We might think about big mammals eating grass, fish circling in ponds and birds chirping happy songs. While it might be positive for us to think about these happy images, they aren’t representative of the average life in nature. It is common to hold an idyllic view of nature. However, nature is anything but idyllic. 

The Reality of Nature

Charles Darwin wrote in a letter to Joseph Hooker: “What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel work of nature!”

Nick Bostrom writes in Golden that (1): "Many humans look at nature from an aesthetic perspective and think in terms of biodiversity and the health of ecosystems, but forget that the animals that inhabit these ecosystems are individuals and have their own needs. Disease, starvation, predation, ostracism, and sexual frustration are endemic in so-called healthy ecosystems. The great taboo in the animal rights movement is that most suffering is due to natural causes."

These two quotes emphasise how horrific life for animals is in the wild. Gardens can be considered ecosystems, too. Everything described by Bostrom might happen daily in our backyard - maybe every minute if we think about how many thousands of insects exist. There could be a lot of suffering. 

Moral philosophers like Oscar Horta, Catia Faria and Jeff Sebo also debunk the idyllic view of nature (2). There are many causes of suffering - such as the ones listed above and injury, parasitism, malnutrition, weather conditions, natural disasters and psychological stress. 

(b) Conflict between a wasp and a spider. It might end deadly for one of them. Image by Bogdan Costin 

(c)  Parasitic wasps creates a living body snatcher. Image by © Jeff-o-matic, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

Reproduction Strategies

But that is not all. Regardless of big events happening, most animals die prematurely in nature. This is mainly because there are two reproductive strategies in nature. A distinction can be made between r-strategists and k-strategists (2, 3). K-strategists are, for example, humans, elephants, whales and most other mammals as well as many bird species. These animals are characterised by few offspring, so the parents invest a lot to keep them alive. 

The r-strategists include insects and fish, for example. These have many offspring. As the parents do not take care of the offspring, this is the strategy used by these species to maintain their population sizes. Population dynamics teach us that, on average, only one offspring per parent reaches adulthood. The rest die early and helplessly, often a potentially agonising death. 

(d) Hundreds of eggs of a vapourer moth. Image courtesy of Amateur Entomologist Society. 

(e) A wood frog and thousands of her eggs. Only a few of them will reach adulthood. Image by Judy Gallagher 

A Life Worth Living

From such a short life, death takes on high importance (2). If this death is weighed against their short life, their lives are filled with more suffering than pleasure. If we accept that insects can suffer, then this raises the disturbing possibility that many of them may have "net-negative" lives, i.e. the negative experiences outweigh the positive. You can ask yourself this question: If you knew your life will predominantly be filled with experiences like starvation, dehydration and you will eventually be eaten alive by another animal just a few days or weeks after you came into existence, would you even want to be born in the first place? 

We have enough evidence to believe that not only mammals and birds but also amphibians and insects are sentient. As sentient, they can experience both negative and positive mental states (3). For example, studies (4) show that bees can suffer from depression and stress. Frogs can experience fear (5). They can also remember and learn and they love to play and show spatial cognition (6). However, the welfare of insects has rarely been taken into account in scientific research. But if we agree that suffering is inherently bad and that we should improve individuals’ lives where we can. Evidence points clearly in the direction that insects feel and therefore they morally matter. More research needs to be done to understand how to adequately intervene.

This can all sound highly depressing and most likely will change our view on nature. But let us not just think about ourselves. In this case, of course, the bearers of suffering are other individuals. Now we might feel helpless since we can’t help them all and it is very difficult to track how much suffering exactly is going on. 

How Can You Help?

Nevertheless, just because we can’t help all of Earth’s sentient beings, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t help at all. I would suggest starting small and thinking about our very own environment. Improving the well-being of a mouse in our garden might not matter on a global scale, but it will definitely matter for this mouse. The same is true for a ladybug, bee or any other sentient being, however small they might be. We should assume that they - just like us - would want to have lives filled with positive experiences. 

A garden itself is an intervention in nature. Our actions affect many individuals every year. Even if we don’t want to change natural processes in the wild, gardens present a different situation. Gardening is already our doing and our actions come with responsibility. Let’s think about a bird who trapped her wings in a plastic chain and faces death if she isn’t freed. Most of us would probably help her and remove the chain. Furthermore, let’s imagine the bird is free to roam but a cat is trying to catch her. Most of us would probably stop the cat so the bird can live. Now would it make a difference if it is a domestic or wild cat? Most likely not. 

These are excellent examples of how it is quite normal for us to help wild animals. Rescuing sentient beings from a forest fire or flood are other great examples. Furthermore, for example, the bubonic plague was a natural event that killed millions; cancer is natural, as is foot fungus. Unless you are biocentric, you surely would not allow these forms of natural life to strive and multiply. We try to intervene with these natural processes since we believe they cause more harm than good. So since we are already intervening in natural processes, let us explore how these interventions can not only be aimed at humans but all beings that can suffer. 

(f) Image of an Insect Hotel by Mika Baumeister. 

Insect hotels offer shelter when the weather is harsh and can be an excellent breeding ground. You can get smaller ones for your garden as well. Another example of how normal it can be for us to help wild animals. More positive examples can be found at the end of this article under “further links”. 

There are three main things we can do: create awareness, change how we see nature and change our gardening. Creating awareness is important because helping wild animals is a blind spot even in the vegan community. More research needs to be done that aims to find out the preferences and needs of nonhuman animals. Animal welfare science is generally a newer discipline. If there is more interest in the public, British universities will be more inclined to offer courses that aim at understanding wild animal welfare. Most research centres around human interest when it comes to conservation. 

Individual Animal Well-Being

We tend to give abstract entities such as ecosystems or species intrinsic value but rarely take the individuals’ perspective into account. But if we think about it, ecosystems or species are mostly terms we use to describe something. These entities cannot experience joy or pain, i.e. they do not have mental states. Animals on the other hand have. This is similar to a garden. A garden can be beautiful, colourful, diverse, messy or forgotten. But a garden itself can never suffer or be happy. Gardens mostly serve as an instrumental value for humans so we can experience positive feelings. 

But is it justified that our pleasure comes with someone else's suffering? We surely wouldn’t want to starve or be preyed on. So let’s start talking more about the actual welfare of our garden inhabitants. Our world is far from perfect, yet we can imagine what a perfect world would look like. In this perfect world, would your garden be filled with a) suffering and death or b) joy and happiness? If your answer is b), then let’s take action. Although both these examples are extremes and most likely are never reachable to 100%. However, even if we can increase welfare by 1% or 10%, doesn’t that sound good? So what can we do today? 

• Reducing excess food sources (such as decaying plant matter that supports insect reproduction)

• Avoiding interventions that create boom-and-bust cycles, where population explosions are followed by mass die-offs, for example: excessive fertilisation, which can lead to insect population booms.

•  Practice Crop Rotation: Avoid planting the same or related crops in the same place season after season to prevent soil-borne diseases and reduce “pest” buildup. 

• Select Plants Thoughtfully: Choose seasonal, locally adapted, and hardy plants that are more robust and resilient. 

• Plants with strong scents, like herbs, citrus, and flowers, can repel insects and therefore hopefully stop their massive reproduction (examples include: lavender, dianthus, catmint, sage, butter daisy, African lily, garlic, leeks, onions, radishes, rhubarb, citronella grass etc.). 

• Last but not least, many gardening practices involve animal cruelty. Some people use fish blood as a fertiliser or lethal traps for so-called “pests”. Avoiding these can be easy and makes your garden less filled with death. Try it this year!

Wild animal suffering is not at all limited to our gardens. However, gardens are a great way to start caring about nonhuman animals and their feelings. Compassionate gardening therefore refers to not just caring about our gardens for human interest alone, but taking the interest of all affected sentient beings into account. They want to live happily just as much as us. We need more research in this area and more studies about the feelings of wild animals. So let’s talk about this topic and create awareness.

Literary References

1. Bostrom, N. (2004). Golden Retriever - Live on Larry King! Retrieved March 13, 2025, with kind permission from https://nickbostrom.com/fable/retriever 

2. Wikipedia contributors. (2025, March 13). Wild animal suffering. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_animal_suffering#Philosophical_status - Copyright License - CC-BY-3.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_4.0_International_License

3. Animal Ethics (2020) Introduction to wild animal suffering: A guide to the issues, Oakland: Animal Ethics, retrieved from https://www.animal-ethics.org/wp-content/uploads/Introduction_to_Wild_Animal_Suffering.pdf © Animal Ethics 2020, available as a free download. Partial reproduction with source citation is allowed.  

4. Bateson, M., Desire, S., Gartside, S. E., & Wright, G. A. (2011). Agitated honeybees exhibit pessimistic cognitive biases. Current Biology, 21(12), 1070–1073. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2011.05.017  Copyright License - CC-BY-3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/  

5. Wikipedia contributors. (2024, October 18). Pain in amphibians. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_amphibians#:~:text=See%20also:%20Pain%20in%20anials,human%20animals%20may%20experience%20pain.  - CC-BY- SA 4.0 International License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_4.0_International_License 

6. Pašukonis, A., Trenkwalder, K., Ringler, M., Ringler, E., Mangione, R., Steininger, J., Warrington, I., & Hödl, W. (2016). The significance of spatial memory for water finding in a tadpole-transporting frog. Animal Behaviour, 116, 89–98. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2016.02.023  License: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/  

Further links: 

• Images and more information about wild animal suffering: https://www.animal-ethics.org/situation-of-animals-wild/

• Positive examples of helping nonhuman animals: https://www.animal-ethics.org/helping-animals-in-the-wild/ 

• To read how Oscar Horta debunks the idyllic view of nature: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281535446_Debunking_the_idyllic_view_of_natural_processes_Population_dynamics_and_suffering_in_the_wild 

Images 

• “A small mouse sitting inside a teapot”. Image by Phil Robson.

• Conflict between a wasp and a spider. Image by Bogdan Costin.

• Parasitic wasp creates a living body snatcher. Image by © Jeff-o-matic, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

• Hundreds of eggs of a vapourer moth Image courtesy of Amateur Entomologist Society. Image license CC-BY 2.5 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/

• "Wood Frog - Lithobates sylvaticus and Wood Frog eggs, Lake Accotink Park, Springfield, Virginia, February 23, 2017 (52200154406)" by Judy Gallagher is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

• Insect Hotel by Mika Baumeister.