The devastation in our gardens continues apace. We appreciate our gardens for their wide aesthetic appeal, the variety of plants, their presentations, colours, textures, growth patterns, fragrance, and companionability with other flowering and green plants. Their presence is a delight and a pleasure to us. They make summertime an especial time of visual enjoyment.

The Japanese beetles that have been infesting the gardens appreciate them for the opportunity they provide to feast without hindrance. There are no natural predators for these beetles, since they're an invasive species. Birds don't seem to be attracted to them as a food source, more's the pity. And though they only stick around for about a month (life-cycle of the adult) they make a powerful impact in the garden.

They certainly have their favourite plants to satisfy their feeding frenzies. Enabling the females to lay her eggs in the soil under the grass. The grubs feed on grass roots, and of course impact the grass in their grub stage. This spring's (and summer's) unusual level of rainfall has ensured that the grubs have been larger and more vigorous than ever; and hence the beetles have benefited hugely. When you make the effort to try to deter them by spraying, they've got to be sprayed directly, it isn't enough to spray the plant they're devouring. And then, guess what? If you succeed in knocking off a handful of them, before they fly off self-protectively, more just keep coming.

If your plants are more plentiful and attractive to them than your neighbours' plants they'll vacate your neighbour's gardens and make the short flight to yours in an obvious show of preference, a showing that may make you wince for the impact they have, but which just points out how they've been equipped by nature to be a voracious feeding machine. Patience is one of those virtues that is called upon on such occasions.

The fact is, you can't do much else but wait for them to expire and leave your poor, ragged garden in peace. Oddly enough they don't seem to be a problem in Japan where they hail from. I lived there for a year, grew a bit of a garden, and don't recall ever seeing them, though when summer really got going and it was both hot and humid beyond belief, it was cicadas that made their presence known, strumming like high-tension wires in the atmosphere.

Our gardens are somewhat over-planted, since I tend to cram plants into any available bit of soil that isn't otherwise occupied. And when plants prosper and mature, they spread, crowding one another out. And then, the most aggressive are the winners for space. My Echinacea that's been around for quite awhile in various spots in the garden were far more robust and colour-dense last year than they are turning out to be this year, but it's early days yet.

The begonias that were over-wintered as bare bulbs are doing well; the foliage is large and well-formed, the flowers a little more shy. In the rock garden running alongside one side of the house, the hostas and heucheras have really taken over. I've got to exercise care to tread on the flat rocks, not the plants.

Oddly the million bells we've got in a hanging planter off the deck just above one of the roses that are being hopelessly consumed by the Japanese beetles seems not to be of the slightest interest to those discriminating beasts. We have at least that to be thankful for.