How to Attract Beneficial Insects to Your Organic Garden

Design your garden for pollinator appeal when you include the food, water and habitat they need to thrive. There are many beautiful flowering perennials and annuals, shrubs, herbs and trees that attract pollinators.

For example, you may think that butterflies merely flutter around aimlessly. But they actually help plants make seeds and fruit. While visiting multiple blossoms, butterflies drink nectar and spread pollen. You can nourish them by planting a pollinator garden. It can feature aster, bee balm, butterfly bush, lavender, purple coneflower and zinnia.

For pollinators in general, select flowers and herbs with yellow, red, orange or blue petals and a fresh, mild and flowery sweet scent.

Plant these Annuals for Pollinators:

• Bachelor Buttons
• Calendula
• Cosmos
• Feverfew
• Mexican Sunflower
• Sunflowers
• Sweet Alyssum
• Zinnias

Plant these Perennials for Pollinators:

• Ajuga
• Asters
• Catmints
• Chrysanthemums
• Cinquefoils
• Coneflowers
• Coreopsis
• Lavender
• Scabiosa
• Sea Pinks (Thrifts)
• Yarrows

Herbs for Pollinators:

• Basil
• Borage
• Chervil
• Coriander
• Dill
• Fennel
• Garlic Chives
• Mints (in containers)
• Sweet Marjoram

Once you bring beneficial insects into your garden, keep them there by providing water and shelter. Insects need water for drinking, cooling and reproduction. It also provides shelter for protection and nesting.

Shallow dishes, like plant saucers, make fine feeding dishes. You can add colorful glass beads for landing pads. Birdbaths are helpful, too. If you're worried about mosquitoes, toss in a mosquito dunk. These chunks are safe around birds, pets and wildlife. And they will eliminate mosquito larvae where there's standing water, such as rain barrels, small ponds and birdbaths.

Consider taking steps to attract native bees, essential pollinators for any garden. Solitary native bees are two to three times more effective pollinators than honeybees and bumblebees. Common species include sweat bees, carpenter bees, mason bees and leaf-cutter bees. A female native bee will gather pollen and nectar, build her nest and lay her eggs alone. With short adult lifespans, they work in small areas, gathering pollen and building their nests.

Keep in mind that some beneficial bees prefer to nest in sandy and dry soil underground. These include bumblebees, cellophane bees, miner bees and sweat bees. Leave undisturbed places for these beneficials to nest. Other bees like to nest in woody spaces, like dead trees. These include carpenter bees, leafcutter bees, mason bees and orchard bees. If you're able, leave dead tree stumps in landscapes to provide habitat for them.

An easy way to support bees is to install a bee house. The bamboo tubes are designed to mimic bee nesting spots in the wild. Female bees lay eggs in the tubes, fill the tubes with pollen and seal them off with mud. The young bees can grow safely, hibernating in their cocoons in the nests and emerging in spring.

It's important to know the insects in your garden. Just because they look scary doesn't mean that they're there to harm your plants. For example, butterflies don’t actually eat anything on their travels, only drinking available water and nectar. But they help plants make seeds and fruit by traveling from blossom to blossom, drinking nectar and spreading pollen.

Another example of beneficial insects are parasitoid wasps, which prey on tomato and tobacco hornworms. These destructive caterpillars can decimate an entire tomato plant, including its fruit, in a day. Beneficial parasitoid wasps lay their eggs on hornworm caterpillars. Their growing eggs literally suck the life out of the pest. If you find a hornworm covered with white eggs on your tomato plants, leave it in your garden. Let the wasps grow and breed.

Identifying insects is easy with online guides and image searches. You can also use The Home Depot Weed and Pest Problem Solver Tool to identify pests and locate solutions.

Beneficial insects work to balance the ecology of your garden. They're vital, building up soil and planting the right plants in the right place. But they're also an essential component of organic gardening. Aside from pollination, good bugs also offer pest control. They eat bad bugs, reducing your need for chemical insecticides. Examples include:

• Lacewings are pollinators, but in both their larvae and adult stages, they feed (quickly and ferociously) on harmful, soft-bodied insects. Their targets include whitefly larvae, mites, and especially aphids, hence their nickname of “aphid lions.” Lacewings are attracted to fern-leaf yarrow and dill.
• Ladybugs are not true bugs, but actually lady beetles. They feed on smaller, destructive insects, like mealy bugs and aphids. In fact, they often lay their eggs among aphid eggs, so their larvae have something to eat when they emerge. To attract ladybugs, plant chives, cilantro, dill, cosmos, marigolds and yarrow.
• Native bees will respond to brightly colored, single-petal flowers, such as coneflower and daisies. Your gardens will also do well with flowering vegetables, including squash and tomatoes.
• Dragonflies, along with damselflies, are known collectively as odonates. However, dragonflies have thicker bodies, and their eyes are closer together. Among the planet’s oldest insects, they help gardens by reducing populations of small insects, including aphids, gnats, mosquitos and biting flies. Dragonflies are attracted to water, such as ponds with water-loving plants. They can be found in water lilies, swamp milkweed, cardinal flower, water lettuce and blue irises. To attract them, plant a rain garden under your rain chain.
• Other insects that prey on bad bugs include assassin bugs, parasitic wasps, praying mantises, ground beetles, centipedes and millipedes.

The next time you see a spider in your garden, don’t reach for a broom to knock down the web, or a spray to kill it. Spiders are among your best friends in the garden. Their populations increase to prey on insects.

According to Theresa Rooney, author of "Humane Critter Control: Natural, Non-Toxic Solutions to Protect Your Garden," (Cool Springs Press), spiders will reduce the number of pesky pests, like bothersome, biting mosquitoes. They'll also take care of pests that damage your garden, such as aphids.

“When you have spiders in the garden, that’s a sign of a healthy ecology,” Rooney says. “Take time to watch them for a few minutes. It’s amazing to watch them spin their webs and capture prey.”

Of course, there are some pests that you don’t want in your garden, like poisonous spiders and snakes. If you’re allergic to bees and wasps, you’ll want to keep those away, too. Wasp nests on the ground and fire ant hills can be dangerous and will need to be treated.

But let spiders build their webs. And if they’re in high-traffic areas around your home, walk around them for a few days. The webs will be knocked down soon enough by winds and birds.