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Attracting Beneficial Insects to your Garden
Beneficial insects are very desirable members of the garden. They can be predators that feed on pest insects or they may be parasites, that is, they lay their eggs on or in other insects. A parasite insect's larvae will consume the host, usually from the inside.
Beneficial insects can significantly reduce the need for chemical and other controls in a garden, so can reduce your work and any negative environmental effects.
To attract these useful critters, the first thing is to avoid insecticides and herbicides! If you have or introduce a diversity of plants to your garden, you are most of the way there.
Lure Plants
Some plants, though, are particularly useful 'lures' for beneficial insects, providing both shelter and food. Many predators need alternative food sources as well, such as pollen and nectar.
These include:
parsley
daisy flowers (eg, Brachyscome, sunflowers, asters, and calendula)
caraway
coriander (pictured here)
dahlias
native plants (Craspedia pictured below)
Insectary
You can also create a special garden plot, purely to host beneficial insects, called an insectary. It need not be large. Even a plot with only six or seven different varieties of plants that attract insects is useful. Here you can tolerate a higher level of pests too, away from your precious plants, such as vegetables gardens (which will benefit from companion planting with plants that offer some protection to your crop, (see Pest Repellent Plants).
If you have been using chemical controls in your garden, it will take some time for beneficial insect numbers to increase, so try to be patient.
Remember, without any food, beneficial insects won't survive either, so you must be able to tolerate a low level of insect pest damage.
See also Garden Predators, Looking after the good guys: Bees and Looking after the good guys: Flies
Information sources:
www.grinningplanet.com
www.agric.wa.gov.au
Dragonfly photograph by Elaine Shallue
Click here to return to the list of info pages
The information contained on this page is Copyright © SGA and intended for personal use only.
You may not use the information for any other purpose without the express written permission of SGA.
