Garden Pests and Diseases - Friends
Although it seems like there are a lot of critters out to eat your plants, Mother Nature has created a balance to the onslaught of baddies with the insects and animals below.
| Animal | Benefit | How to attract them |
| Birds | Eat slugs, snails and other insects. | Attract birds into the garden by providing food in the winter, with a nut feeder, fat ball or berried shrubs. Erecting nesting boxes will get the adult birds busy in the spring, collecting insects for their young. Don't forget fresh, clean water. |
| Centipede | They are predators and eat insect pests such as grubs (including vine weevil), woodlice and slugs. | |
| Earthworm | They aerate the soil and mix leaves, dead vegetation, animal waste and minerals, excreting a fine rich compost. | If you do have worm casts on your lawn, wait for the casts to dry before brushing them into the grass, where they will act as a great compost, improving the quality of the lawn. |
| Frogs & toads | Eat slugs, snails and other insects. | Create a pool and the frogs and toads seem to appear from nowhere. They need water in order to breed. |
| Hedgehog | Eat slugs, snails, beetles and other insects. | Don't leave out bread and milk, if you think there is a shortage of insects then maybe leave some cat or dog food. For further information see http://www.sttiggywinkles.org.uk/. Also provide a safe place for them to sleep and hibernate. |
| Hoverflies | They should be encouraged into the garden, as during the larva stage they will eat large numbers of aphids, between 500 and 1,000 each. They can be seen flying in the garden from June through to October, depending on the weather. | Planting highly scented flowers including roses, sweetpeas, asters, chrysanthemums and umbelliforms like dill and fennel, will encourage them into your garden. |
| Lacewing | Thin, transparent wings that are nearly twice as long as their body. | Lacewing larvae eat large quantities of aphids so should be encouraged into the garden. Provide them with a place in the garden where they can get winter cover. The adults will lay their eggs in the spring when they wake from hibernation. |
| Ladybird | Love eating aphids, including blackfly and greenfly. | If you've got greenfly, the ladybirds will find you. |
| Spider | Spiders don't do any harm in the garden and should be encouraged, as they eat pest insects, including aphids. If you do want to reduce the number of spiders in a particular area, remove their hiding places or turn over the soil and the spiders will find another home, or encourage blackbirds to your garden, who'll eat them as part of their normal diet. However, it's been estimated by London Zoo, that in the autumn, there are up to 2.25 million spiders per acre of countryside. So you'll have your work cut out trying to iradicate all of them. |
