Stag Beetles have a fight while finishing touches are made to their display. Courtesy The Lightbox

Exhibition preview – Garden Giants: Amazing Bugs in Our Environment at The Lightbox, Woking until Sunday January 4 2009.

Muhammad Ali may have ‘floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee’ and while such aspirations are out of most of our reach, Woking’s award-winning Lightbox is offering the chance to see like a fly and smell like a bug. And even play in a creepy crawly orchestra.

If you head along there from now on until January 4 2009, you will meet your match from the bug world in their Garden Giants exhibition. The double-height Main Gallery has been transformed into an indoor garden where you can encounter beetles, ants, wasps, crickets, snails, ladybirds, butterflies and spiders.

If this doesn’t sound very appealing, you might change your opinion if you know that these are models sculpted to be 400 times their actual size - so the eek factor is still well and truly at the heart of the exhibition.

What's hiding in the potting shed? You can take a peak until January 9 2008. Courtesy The Lightbox

Michael Regan, Exhibitions Manager at The Lightbox says that while it all might make some cringe, Garden Giants, "will show how interesting, varied and incredibly useful these miniature creatures really are."

And they are incredibly useful and indispensible if we want our world to thrive. A sustainable world must include bugs living at the very heart of ecosystems everywhere. This exhibition therefore aims to help insects and other invertebrates find a place in our hearts too so that we look after the environments where they live and thrive best.

Their importance is also explained through text panels from Surrey Wildlife Trust who helped put on the exhibition, which explain about conservation in the local area. You can also see the results of a wildlife survey by local environmental group LA21.

Ladybirds have an image problem - they're not as friendly as they look... Courtesy The Lightbox

The garden experts from the Royal Horticultural Society at Wisley, who are also partners in the exhibition, are also giving tips on how to get the real-life beneficial bugs into our own gardens.

On weekdays there is more advice available when experts from Surrey garden centres and horticultural societies are on duty to give gardeners more information about garden do's and don’ts if you are looking to fill your own small part of the environment with bugs.

Bug boss, or rather, Principal Entomologist from Wisley, Andrew Halstead explains, “Although a minority are pests, most insects are harmless and have vital roles to play. Without insects and other invertebrates, there would be no food for bats, spiders and many birds."

"Many flowers are dependent on insects for pollination and without them would fail to set seed or produce fruit. Bugs help to keep each others’ populations in check, avoiding large build-ups of unchecked pests.”

What a thought!

Image - Ant antics, along with other bug behaviour, will appeal or appal during a visit to Garden Giants. Courtesy The Lightbox

As well as insect facts being given out on the interactive displays, activities that allow you to experience the world as an insect does will certainly make visitors fall in love with bugs. Or run a mile.

And if you do fall in love, Lightbox will be bringing 'hands-on' to a whole new level with an events programme that offers the chance to handle the real things. There is also a talk entitled Ladybrids Behaving Badly and some creative family activities based on the themes and ideas in the exhibition.

The Lightbox is this year’s winner of the Art Fund Prize for museums and galleries.