Not all the insects in your garden are pests, some can be very helpful to a gardener. So how can insects be beneficial to a garden and how can we encourage these good bugs?

There are several ways that insects can be useful in gardens, but two important ones are pollination of flowers and predation of pests. Without pollinators such as bees and wasps, our fruit trees and vegetable gardens will not produce much food, and many of our flowers will not set seed for the following year. Predatory insects can help control pest insects. For example, both the nymphs and adults of Ladybirds eat aphids, and Praying Mantis eat many different pest species including ants and caterpillars.

To encourage these helpful bugs we can grow plants that attract them, provide suitable habitat, and avoid broad target insecticides. There are many good articles and other resources on which species to plant to attract useful insects to your garden, links to a few can be found at the bottom of this section. Some insects require a safe place to nest or to hibernate over winter, and you can help provide this by making an insect hotel. These insect hotels can be made from different materials and can make attractive garden ornaments as well as being a home for good bugs. A strong insecticide may knock out your pest species, but it will also kill all the good bugs in your garden as well. It’s always a good idea to try gentler or pest-specific treatments such as garlic soap spray for aphids, or Bacillus thuringiensis spray (Dipel) for caterpillars.

A garden is not just plants and soil, and if we look after our populations of helpful insects, they can help us look after our gardens.