Most Wanted Good Garden Bugs

Earthworms in soil.Earthworms are one of the most wanted good garden bugs.

The 10 most wanted good garden bugs. These garden bugs are truly wanted! They are the good guys—bugs you want in your garden.

What's that you say? No such thing as a good bug? The only good bug is a dead bug? Shame on you! Good bugs feed on the bad bugs.

So, if you kill off the good bugs, you're going to have twice as many bad bugs on your hands (and your plants). Here are the good garden bugs to make you feel at home in your backyard.

10 Most Wanted Good Garden Bugs

1.  Earthworms

Earthworms aerate the soil by tunneling, and their excrement fertilizes it. Call them "poopers." One of the most wanted good garden bugs. And an essential part of backyard composting.

2.  Pillbugs

Poopers. Pill bugs are mostly beneficial decomposers in gardens, but large populations can damage young plants and seedlings by feeding on roots and shoots. 

To control excessive pill bug numbers, reduce garden moisture, eliminate moist hiding places such as mulch and debris, and use simple traps, such as potato slices, to physically remove them.

3.  Dung Beetles

These good garden bugs improve soil health by burying and breaking down animal waste, which recycles nutrients, aerates the soil, and improves water retention. 

This nutrient cycling and improved soil structure help plants grow, and they also help reduce pests like flies by removing their breeding grounds.

4.  Bumble Bees

Bumble bees are beneficial pollinators. To support them, plant a variety of flowers, such as asters, echinacea, and lavender; provide a shallow dish of water with rocks for them to drink from safely

5.  Praying Mantises

Praying mantises eat a wide variety of common garden pests, including aphids, caterpillars, flies, leafhoppers, and grasshoppers.

6.  Lacewings

Lacewing larvae are voracious predators that eat many garden pests, including aphids, thrips, mealybugs, whiteflies, and mites.

7.  Ladybugs

Ladybugs are good garden bugs that help control pests like aphids by eating them.

8.  Braconid Wasps

Braconid wasps are beneficial garden insects that help control pests like caterpillars, aphids, and beetle larvae.

They are not aggressive and are attracted to gardens that have nectar-producing flowers, such as dill, fennel, and sweet alyssum.

9.  Butterflies

Butterflies are not just pretty to look at; they are also essential for your plants. When an adult butterfly lands on a flower to suck some delicious nectar through its proboscis, it accidentally gathers pollen on its body.

The butterfly rubs some of the pollen on the next flower it moves to and collects some more. Pollination allows plants to reproduce by producing seeds.

10.  Wasps

Wasps are beneficial predators. They hunt insects such as whiteflies and aphids. They kill caterpillars. For many, wasps are seen as threats and even nuisances, but they play vital roles in the garden ecosystem.

As a natural form of pest control, they are a gardener's friend, taking crop-eating insects to feed to their young. They also pollinate flowers and other plants.

So do what you can to welcome them into your garden, and you're sure to enjoy the blossoming results!


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