Gardens are precious, but insects are just as precious, especially when it comes to keeping your garden in working order. Here are four insects that are beneficial to your garden, and how you can attract them. It doesn’t take much, just get out your gardening tools and watch your garden grow healthy and strong.
Beneficial insects to attract:
Ground Beetle
The ground beetle is nocturnal and is a predator of slugs, snails, cabbage maggots and other pests that you do not want in your garden. To attract these beauties, you should plant perennials in your garden. Such perennials can include Russian sage, Perennial sage, peonies and daffodils. This can help provide a stable habitat for the beetle to live in.
Lacewings
These little helpers can prevent aphids, caterpillars, mealybugs and whiteflies from festering in your garden. You can always go out and buy the eggs from your local garden shop, but you can also easily attract them yourself by growing alyssum in your garden. This beautiful plant attracts lacewings and will keep your garden looking fresh and nice.
Ladybugs
Much like lacewings, adult ladybugs eat aphids, mites and their hungry larvae do even more to protect your garden. To attract these bad boys, plant herbs such as dill, fennel and even yarrow in your garden. You can benefit from growing the delicious herbs, and you can keep your garden free from nasty pests that want to destroy everything you’re working towards.
Bees
Bees are a huge benefit to your garden, so don’t shoo them away! They are pollinators, in fact, they pollinate 80% of flowering plants and 75% of fruit, nuts and veggies. These little guys aren’t aggressive as one might think, and they’re hard-working. In order to attract them into your garden, plant flowers that are bee-friendly. This includes single petal flowers, as they contain more pollen than multi-petal flowers. You can also plant colourful flowers, range from purple, yellow and blue, as they attract more bees.
To make them feel welcome, you can even make a bee bath. Grab your retractable hose and find a shallow area, since bees can’t swim in deeper water. This can give the bees the chance to have a drink since they’re working so hard, they deserve a break!
These insects are beneficial to your garden, and they are easy to attract. It takes a little time and a little effort, but these insects can help do all the work for you!
Ally Feiam is the marketing & content creator for MyDeal, an online marketplace with over 25,000 products.
