How Charming Bug Snugs Help Change the Landscape Culture

A big challenge for folks doing the right thing by nature in their outside space is there’s a defensive insistence that the landscape be visually acceptable to the folks who have toxic, unnatural landscapes. Cues to care is a phrase often used in native gardening circles to caution against making natural landscapes too natural.

In a webinar Benjamin Vogt suggested this native landscape doesn't look intentional enough to please folks with lawns because it doesn't have flowers blooming.

The term cues to care was coined over 30 years ago by a landscape architect professor as a tool to make yards designed to welcome nature more relatable as intentional because “the appearance if indigenous ecosystems and wildlife habitats violate cultural norms for the neat appearance of the landscape”.

The idea that biodiverse rewilded yards designed to welcome wildlife are not "culturally acceptable" is from decades ago before it was widely known and accepted that neat and orderly traditional landscape practices once accepted as the only way to be a "good neighbor" cause immense harm to the natural world.

Fast forward a few decades and we still haven’t flipped the script to ask the folks with yards covered in invasive English ivy or pesticide soaked resource greedy lawns to justify their destructive landscape aesthetic and show us their ecological cues to care. We continue to scold folks with pocket prairies in their front yard to add a strip of useless grass to make it more "neat and tidy" for folks who have no intellectual interest in an environmentally supportive yard. It’s like opening a vegan restaurant and having steak on the menu to entice folks who like meat to eat there hoping they'll become vegans.

It's time to stop being defensive about nurturing the natural world in our own outside spaces - and focus on educating and raising awareness about what we are doing and why!

Times have changed and “indigenous ecosystems and wildlife habitats” now dominate the landscape world. Natural landscapes no longer “violate cultural norms for neat appearance of the landscape” and are instead showing up in the highest places in the horticultural world such as the Philadelphia Flower Show, our country's largest and oldest horticultural event where a snag was profiled in a winning exhibit.

A snag was the profiled by a Philadelphia Flower Show winning garden by Kelly Norris (photo Jaime Alvarez)

 Education, raising awareness, and showing examples of an ecologically aligned landscape is the way forward, not trying to find ways to fit a natural landscape into a rigid neat and tidy look. The act of making our own yards an example of what is possible is the most powerful way we can put our words into actions and reinforce the need for change. The more rewilded yards there are the more accepted rewilded yards will become.

My 100% rewilded yard doesn't follow any harmful landscape practices. I'm not trying to model the lifeless landscapes all around me even a little bit. We need to see more yards like this to normalize their acceptance. As for home values - within the last 5 years the expensive homes on both sides of mine have sold soon after hitting the market and above asking price - and my newish neighbors all appreciate my wild yard! One even told me he loved that when he stepped out of the car to look at the home for sale that it felt like he was next door to a nature sanctuary because of all the birds!

Adding functional ecological cues to care is a way to profile a yard designed to welcome wildlife and might include having native plants, water sources, nesting boxes, wildlife habitat planters, rain barrels, educational yard signs, and yard certification signs.

An ecologically aligned yard authentically evidences care and intention in multiple ways - there's no need to copy anything from the yards that are destroying natural processes.

 A yard with a healthy ecosystem also showcases decay. Yes decay. Practices such as leaving the leaves, leaving dried stems, supporting snags, or creating brush piles, dead hedges, and stumperies are based on the benefits of decomposing organic matter which is just as important as having flowers for pollinators. These sorts of "brown" habitat support elements are a way to keep natural matter in the yard instead of treating it as yard waste. They offer wildlife a safe place for cover, shelter, nesting, and foraging, and build biodiversity as the organic matter nutrient cycles to build healthy soil.

I've become somewhat of a cheerleader for decay and try to support this natural process throughout my yard. My little stumpery of logs and stumps arranged for wildlife habitat is a favorite spot for chipmunks, birds, and squirrels. I imagine there are also sorts of insects beneath it for them!

I use the term wildlife to mean all the living things in an ecosystem which includes tiny insects, not just larger critters.

When I say wildlife benefits from decomposition, I mean all the living beings in my yard including Eastern eyed click beetles that live in the larval stage for 2-5 years in rotting wood or fireflies that live in the larval stage in the soil under organic matter for 1-2 years.

I'm not the only one normalizing decomposition! In 2023 Omved Gardens captured the attention of the gardening world with a small and intentional habitat structure filled with dried natural matter adorably called a bug snug, at the 2024 Chelsea Flower Show, Octavia Hill Garden showcased a bug snug, in 2025 Summerhome Garden in Denver creates structurally striking bug snugs that are meant to standout in the landscape, and bug snugs seem to be popping up everywhere I look!

Bug snugs are popping up everywhere! (Octavia Hill Garden photo Jenny Rose Carey, Summerhome Garden photo Pam Penick/Digging, Omved Garden and RHS Garden Hyde Hall photos taken from IG, Wylde Center photo is mine)

Bug snugs are made by forming three equal sticks together into a tripod and securing them with jute.  Dried organic brown matter such as stems, stalks, twigs, pinecones, and seedheads are loosely stacked inside. Bug snugs can vary in size from two feet to six feet or more! The size can determine the content – smaller bug snugs can easily be filled with broken down stems, stalks, bits of bark, pinecones, nuts, and seedheads. Larger bug snugs can also have larger stems, twigs, and small branches. I add a layer of leaves at the bottom for a nice moist, decaying foundation. If the bug snug is filled with too many leaves throughout it they break down quicker than other organic matter and create more of a compost pile situation than a micro brush pile.

I made this small bug snug on Valentine's Day just a few feet from my sidewalk. I still need to make a little sign explaining what it is because I see folks stopping to look at it.

Bug snugs are touted as a way to support overwintering insects. They’re often taken apart in the spring but I’m not sure why because much like larger brush piles, bug snugs create a whole little ecosystem. There’s a world of predators and prey that live and forage in and around them! There are even tiny critter holes of some sort in the bottom of mine! To maintain my bug snugs as they settle, I continually refresh them with dried plant matter and other organic bits such as pinecones.

Bug snugs support wildlife habitat throughout the year - like a natural landscape they are dynamic and look a little different every month.

When the weather warms up 🐞Bug snugs offer a cool, sheltered space for insects

🕷️Spiders form webs on bug snugs to take advantage of all the insect life

💡The bottom of a bug snug is ideal habitat for fireflies and other soil life that lives under damp, decaying organic matter. Fireflies live for one to two years in the soil in the larval stage before emerging for a few weeks as adults to reproduce and start a new generation.

🦎Bug snugs support anoles, skinks, toads, and small snakes such as Dekays brownsnakes

🐦Birds and other wildlife such as chipmunks forage for insects in the bug snugs.

🪹Bug snugs also offer the dried bits and pieces birds are looking for when nesting. This is the main reason I wrap dried passionflower vine around my bug snugs.

This is one of my bug snugs at the end of last May after I refreshed it with dried stems and other brown matter from around my yard that had fallen where it needed to be removed.

Bug snugs profile the difference between a landscape designed to control nature and one that puts natural processes at the center of the yard. They act as both a habitat support element and a whimsical ecological “cue to care”!

I filled my latest bug snug with dried broken seedheads, pinecones, and dried passionflower vines that I removed from the temporary trellises I put up each year to support the vines wherever they pop up.

* Many people live in communities where there are still backward rules around the aesthetics of a yard and habitat support elements such as bug snugs are forced to be tucked away in a back corner out of sight. This is slowly changing as people push back on restrictive ecologically harmful rules. For example, thanks to the tireless work of the Nancy Lawson (the Humane Gardener) and her sister Janet Crouch Maryland now has a law prohibiting HOAs from enforcing turf grass mandates or banning environmentally friendly landscaping, such as native plants, pollinator gardens, and rain gardens. HOAs must allow these natural landscapes but can still require homeowners to maintain and regularly tend to the low-impact landscaping.

Photo by Nancy Lawson (the Humane Gardener) of her sister Janet Crouch who successfully battled her HOA and got a state law passed to prevent HOAs from prohibiting pollinator gardens.

Note: There are no affiliate links in this blog – I enjoy the freedom that comes from speaking my mind and elevating those helping nature in some way. The highlighted text throughout the post might be references, details, explanations, worthy organizations and businesses, or examples that I think might be helpful 😊