Permaculture at the Edges: A Story of Wasps

Last summer, a nest of wasps settled into a hanging pot of petunias on our balcony. They were close—too close, some would say. Six feet from the door. Right where my daughter plays, where I gather blackberries and herbs, where I lean in to pick roses.

My husband wanted to get rid of them. Fear does that—it colonizes your gut before anything else has a chance to speak. But I asked him to wait and see what happens if we meet them with softness.

Every morning, I stepped into that shared space with deliberate slowness. I talked to them. Not in words meant for humans, but in tone and gesture, breath and patience. I poured water into the little pond near their nest. And I think they knew. Science says wasps can recognize human faces, but I didn’t need data—I saw it in how they moved. They watched me. I watched them. And we made peace in the tension.

They never stung us.

In a culture trained to kill anything that buzzes too close, that’s a kind of miracle.

But in permaculture, we don’t call that a miracle—we call it a function. A niche. A role being played in the architecture of life. The wasps came not to menace, but to serve. They are carnivores and pollinators, guardians and gleaners. Their presence says: there is life here, enough to feed our children.

We live in a world that wants to draw hard lines between friend and foe. Between garden and wilderness. But the wasps don’t care for our boundaries. They build their paper homes wherever the wind and structure allow. They teach us that coexistence is not about taming wildness, but recognizing that we are part of it.

The old stories tell us everything with a stinger is dangerous. But I think danger lies in the disconnection. In the refusal to look closely. Wasps are not evil—they are edge dwellers. And edge dwellers, in permaculture, are where the most fertility lies. Where the most life happens.

So here’s what I learned from a pot of petunias and a nest of wasps:

If you come with fear, they will meet you with fear.

If you come with war, they will show you their weapons.

But if you come bearing water, they might let you pass. They might even watch you like kin.