Attracting Butterflies and Helpful Insects To Your Garden

The extra hot summer we had last year has allowed the insects to flourish with research showing that it has nearly doubled the population of butterflies since 2013.  Attracting Butterflies and Helpful Insects To Your Garden will help your plants too.

Butterflies are a way of adding natural colour to your garden and although many other insects are seen as bad, there are some that also have beneficial effects to your garden just like the butterfly does.

Helpful Garden Insects

Butterflies are a type of pollinating insect as are moths, bees, honeybees and hoverflies. This means they move between different plants carrying pollen helping the plants to continue growing.

Predatory insects are helpful to gardens because they eat any harmful insects in your garden, these predatory insects include:

• Ladybirds
• Dragonflies
• Spiders
• Mites
• Green lacewings

Another type of garden insect which benefits your garden are the parasitic insects such as wasps. These lay their eggs inside harmful insects and once they hatch the new born larvae feed off them.

Attracting Helpful Insects

March is the start of butterfly season and there are a number of flowers you can add to your garden in order to attract them.

Annual plants complete their life cycle in one year and then die, to attract butterflies and helpful insects such as bees, at this time of year it is a good idea to plant summer annual plants as these germinate in spring.

The French Marigold is an annual summer plant which can be planted between February – April to attract helpful insects throughout the summer. Another plant like this is the Candytuft which is another bright pretty flower to attract butterflies and insects throughout the season.

Putting a layer of mulch made up of chopped bark and dry grass around the bottom of your plants will provide a moist place for spiders and beetles to live which are predatory insects that feed on any harmful unwanted ones.

You can also add a bird bath to your garden as it’s a pretty decoration and provides a source of water for all the insects you want to encourage living in your garden. It will also attract other wildlife such as birds which enjoy snacking on the insects you’d rather not have living there.

The harmful insects which hinder rather than help your garden are slugs, aphids and earwigs.

Published February 20th, 2014 by Jordan. Article ref 2444

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