Beneficial Insects - Some Welcome Guests to Your Garden

Our gardens are an ideal habitat for a host of animals, both beneficial and detrimental to our plantlife. With a little bit of planning and effort, you can tip the scales in your garden to make sure that nature is on your - and your plants - side. The best way to make your gardening life easier is to attract the helpful bugs into your garden. These insects will keep pests like aphids in check by hunting them as prey. You can woo these would-be exterminators by bringing in some of their preferred plants that they use as a secondary food source and a home.

This post will look at the most beneficial insects and the plants that will attract them to your garden.

Lacewings Lacewings are an elegant insect with beautiful wings when fully matured. The larvae of the lacewing is what you want in your garden, though. These little critters, also known as aphid lions, have a penchant for gobbling up pesky aphids that wreak havoc on your plants. Better yet, the predatory lacewing larvae will feed on mites and insect eggs, ensuring that there is no hope for future outbreaks. If you are looking to attract lacewings, the following plants will do the job:

Fern leaf yarrow	Dill	Angelica
Purple poppy mallow	Caraway	Coriander
Fennel	Prairie sunflower	Dandelion

 

Ladybugs Ladybugs are the quintessential cute bug and are instantly distinguishable with a ruby red colour and black spots. Like the lacewing, the ladybug larvae are predatory towards aphids and other garden pests. To woo ladybugs to your plants, try to add some of these:

Carpet bugleweed	Basket of gold	Golden marguerite
Butterfly weed	Queen Anne's lace	Fennel
Tansy	Spike speedwell	Hairy vetch

 

Hoverflies Hoverflies, also known as syrphid flies, are a type of predatory fly that looks like a small bee or wasp. Thankfully, these little bugs do not sting, but they do feed on aphids. In order to catch their prey, these flies will rise high up on their back legs and catch the pests before devouring them. For more hoverflies in your garden, add any of these plants:

Common yarrow	Lavender globe lily	Dwarf alpine aster
Masterwort	Purple poppy mallow	Feverfew
Poached egg plant	Pennyroyal	Spearmint

 

Parasitic wasps These wasps employ a particularly dark method of providing a good start for their young. They use their stinger to inject eggs into insect pests. Over time, the hatchlings will emerge from their eggs and begin feeding on the pests - from the inside, out.