Do you feel squeamish around bugs? Don’t be! In fact, some are your garden’s best buddies, helping to keep those pesky pests at bay and ensuring your plants stay healthy. Intrigued? Let’s discover the friendly bugs you definitely want to welcome into your garden!
1. Bees
It is no exaggeration to say that the most beloved beneficial insect is the bee. These fuzzy creatures are the best buddies of gardeners and farmers alike, gathering nectar and diligently transferring pollen. If you see bees in your garden, don’t freak out. They’re not out to sting you. Just let them be, and they’ll take care of your blooms like pros.
2. Ladybugs
Ladybugs, also commonly known as lady bird beetles or lady beetles, are excellent hunters that prey on aphids, spider mites, thrips, and scales. Eye-spotted lady beetles and twice-stabbed lady beetles are often found on trees searching for aphids. Pink ladybugs are frequently seen in vegetable gardens, where they feed on crop pests and corn pollen. Ladybug larvae are also predatory, consuming hundreds of prey to complete their development. However, if these insects appear indoors, they should be removed.
3. Praying Mantises
Praying mantis is carnivorous, both the adults and the nymphs (baby mantises). They’ve got these powerful ‘blades’—two tough, serrated front legs with hooks at the end to snatch up their prey. Their heads are triangular and super flexible, with big, bright compound eyes and thin antennae. They chow down on over 60 types of pests, like cotton aphids, corn borers, cabbage worms, beetles, grasshoppers and even small rodents.
4. Lacewings
If you spot these tiny dots hanging from threads in your garden, don’t remove them just yet. Those are lacewing eggs! Lacewings are predatory insects with see-through, big wings and a green body. They can lay eggs anywhere—on wood, glass, or even aluminum windows. Both the adult lacewings and their larvae are ace predators, feasting on aphids, scales, red spider mites, and various insect eggs, as well as caterpillars.
5. Earthworms
Earthworms are super common and totally beneficial bugs. They live in the soil, burrowing around and making tons of little tunnels that loosen up the dirt, letting more air and water in. This is awesome for plants and crops to grow. Plus, earthworms do a great job of boosting soil fertility. They eat up all that rotting organic stuff and soil, digest it, and poop it out as rich, nutrient-packed castings—basically, they’re like nature’s own little fertilizer factory, helping crops grow strong and healthy.
6. Hover flies
Hover flies resemble small bees or wasps, with brightly colored bodies adorned with yellow or black markings. Hover flies are attracted to plants like alyssum, marigolds, and yarrow, which provide them with nectar and pollen. Their larvae, known as “rat-tailed maggots,” feed on aphids, thrips, and other small insects, making them valuable allies for organic gardeners.
7. Parasitoid Wasps
Despite their fearsome reputation, most parasitic wasps are harmless to humans and invaluable to gardeners. These tiny wasps lay their eggs inside or on top of garden pests like caterpillars and aphids, providing natural pest control without the need for harmful chemicals.
8. Damsel bugs
Damsel bugs are the ultimate insect gourmets, munching on a smorgasbord of prey like insect eggs, caterpillars, mites, and aphids. You can find these helpful critters hanging out in landscapes, gardens, and even in many field crops.
9. Dragonflies
Dragonflies are carnivorous little hunters, feasting on a bunch of agricultural, forestry, and livestock pests like flies, mosquitoes, leafhoppers, horseflies, and little moths. A big green dragonfly can scarf down about 2,000 aphids and other tiny bugs in a day, which is helpful for boosting crop yields in farmland. If you’ve got a little pond in your garden, you might just attract some of these flying friends.
10. Spiders
Do mosquitoes bite you every time you step outside? Here’s some good news: spiders are super fast at catching mosquitoes, along with aphids, beetles, flies, wasps, moths, leafhoppers, leaf miners, and caterpillars. They can be a natural alternative to bug sprays, helping you keep your plants safe. Even though they might look a bit creepy, most spiders are actually pretty chill. The ones with venom? They’re more into hiding out and keeping to themselves than going on the attack.