Beneficial Insects for Your Garden

Beneficial insects are necessary for the success and health of your garden, so understanding which ones they are and how to attract them is important. The feeding habits of specific insects can help control pests, their activity can improve the health and success of plants and others are a joy to have around.

Which insects are pests?

Which insects are beneficial?

Pollinators

Pest Predators

Predators will eat other insects and are a great source for pest control. Lady beetles, praying mantises, spiders, and centipedes are all great predators to have in your garden.

How to attract beneficial insects

Attracting beneficial insects to your garden is not that difficult since their needs are very basic. Insects like all other animals have three basic needs; food, water and shelter. Provide different types of food for the beneficial insects that you want to attract, larvae and adult insects have different feeding requirements. A variety of flowers, such as small flowered plants and low growing cover plants are a great source of food. You can provide water for insects by adding a water element to your garden. Ideal sources of water can be a birdbath or shallow pans with water tucked among flower beds. Insects like to take shelter close to the ground so line your beds with an organic mulch or plant low growing plants that cover the soil.

Using all of these together will ensure that beneficial visit and continue to help your garden grow.

Bees are the best natural pollinators you could hope for. If you have hopes for a healthy productive garden you need to make your garden open and friendly to bees and their ability to pollinate your fruit trees, shrubs, flowers and seeding plants. Include plants that bees love in your garden and avoid using insecticides which are harmful to bees and other pollinators.