There are many plants you can grow to attract beneficial insects like ladybugs, spiders, parasitic wasps, lacewings and others to your garden. These beneficial insects prey on bad insects and keep their populations in check. I don’t use any chemicals in my garden (except for the occasional non-toxic slug bait) because I have great success letting the bugs duke it out with one another instead.
My Flower Factory catalog arrived in the mail last week and I’m happily making a list of perennials I want to buy when they open later this month. That list includes a few plants that will encourage more beneficial insects to visit my yard.
Yarrow (achillea) is a favorite of beneficials, especially pirate bugs, tachnid flies, lady beetles and spiders. The longest-blooming yarrow is ‘Coronation Gold’ (pictured above). It blooms for almost 8 weeks in the summer. ‘Moonshine’ (pale yellow) is another cultivar that will give you weeks of bloom. Yarrow cultivars come in many colors including peach, pink, salmon, red and white. My favorite is a beautiful red called ‘Angelique.’ They grow in sun or part-shade and even tolerate poor soils.
Butterfly weed (asclepias tuberosa and incarnata) attracts bees, butterflies, hoverflies, and lady beetles. It’s also a host plant for Monarch larvae and in my garden is a honeybee favorite. My asclepias tuberosa plants (orange flowers pictured below) were the victim of a, how shall we say, Japanese-Beetle-induced garden reorganization last summer. I regret murdering them and look forward to welcoming some new plants this spring.
Aslepias tuberosa plants don’t like wet feet so be sure to plant them in well-drained soil. They are happiest when grown in a sunny spot in the garden and they are slow to sprout up in the spring, so they sometimes aren’t for sale in garden centers until early May.
Asclepias incarnata (swamp milkweed) plants like ‘Cinderella’ (pictured above) will tolerate partial-shade conditions and actually like wet feet. If you have an area of heavy clay soil that doesn’t drain well, they will thrive there. My plants are growing in regular garden soil but I keep them happy by mulching them to keep the roots cool and moist.
Another beneficial-insect magnet on my list this spring is goldenrod (solidago). Goldenrod attracts parasitic wasps, big-eyed bugs, assassin bugs and soldier beetles. The plants are easy to grow in sun or part shade and they bloom for many weeks in late summer. The cultivars come in many sizes from 12 inches to 48 inches, but my favorite is the 24-inch ‘Crown of Rays’ (pictured below).
