On 22 Jul 2004 20:05:39 GMT, (Nick Maclaren) wrote:

In article ,
Kate Morgan wrote:

Why bother, they do little harm

I disagree. They undermine concrete slabs and cause them to settle
unevenly, and if their nests are in the roots of a plant, that plant
can die from lack of moisture in dry weather. And they cause humps in
the lawn that get scalped by the mower (and it's not set that low!).

Yes I agree with all of that

And that's serious harm?

For heaven's sake, gardening is about living with nature. If you
don't want to give an inch, you are the sort of person that regards
Monsanto as a "green" company. You can't eliminate ants without
creating a totally artficial ecology.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

Robert said 'they do little harm', which I read to mean they are
benign. Tripping over a badly settled slab can have quite serious
consequences, although I accept that on the scale of world
catastrophes, the problems ants cause come fairly low on the list.

I quote from your later post: "Killing a few particularly annoying
ants' nests is compatible with this, but wholesale slaughter of them
is not." ('this' being 'living with nature').

Ants have their place, in my garden just as much as anywhere else. But
they can be nuisance, and where they are a nuisance I do what I can to
get rid of them. That doesn't mean my garden is a zoological
wilderness or that I advocate "wholesale slaughter" of ants or
anything else. You really shouldn't have interpreted my (or KM's) post
as if I (or we) had done.


--
Chris

E-mail: christopher[dot]hogg[at]virgin[dot]net