Attracting Beneficial Insects to Your Garden

Join forces with nature and keep garden pests under control this season.

Predatory insects like lady beetles, green lacewings, praying mantis and predacious wasps are a few of nature’s pest controllers.

Grow a few plants to attract these beneficial insects to your landscape. Add annuals like sweet alyssum and herbs like dill, fennel, thyme and lavender to gardens and containers. Plant perennials like penstemon, columbine, aster, sedum, yarrow, monarda, and goldenrod,

You will need to tolerate a bit of plant damage to attract the good guys to your landscape. As the pest populations start to build the good guys will move in for the tasty feast.

And don’t use pesticides that kill both the good and bad insects in your garden. Use natural or organic products according to label directions to minimize harm to the beneficial insects.

A bit more information: Beneficial insects do more than just eat garden pests. Honeybees pollinate our flowers, essential for much of our food production and plant reproduction. And ground beetles help break down woodchips and other organic matter helping to improve our soil.