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Fauna
Home » Lawn & Garden » Beneficial Garden Flora and Fauna » FaunaThere is a small ecosystem in every garden, beginning at the roots of the plants and the soil itself. How the gardener makes use of this ecosystem will determine the extent to which the gardener keeps the garden healthy, or the garden keeps itself healthy. This also determines the extent to which a gardener spends money on pesticides and the like. Making use of nature itself is more cost-effective
• Ants are quite useful in the garden. They ventilate the soil with their many tunnels, and their chemical deposits prevent acidity. They feed on many insect pests, notably caterpillar larvae and fruit-fly maggots. Be aware that they are also some of the most industrious 'aphid farmers' in the business.
• Bees live to make honey, and this can be a side benefit to keeping a hive of them on your premises. They love flowering shrubs and herbs like lavender, lemon balm, marjoram, hyssop, basil, coriander, thyme, borage and mint. Planting these encourages the presence of bees.
• Just as bees should be encouraged to call your garden home, it is important not to see every beetle as bad. Many are predators that feed on slugs, snails, caterpillars, cutworm, moth larvae and small insect pests. They do chew on leaves at times too, but one must weight this cost against an overall benefit.
• Butterflies are also great pollinators. Although caterpillars are a nuisance in any garden, the adult of the species is beautiful as a garden standby and useful as a garden pollinator.
• Centipedes are a little scary, both to people and to many garden pests. They eat caterpillars, slugs and other nuisances, and help to recycle and break down garden waste.
• Earthworms are that quiet, behind-the-scenes aspect to a garden, without which it would not be as likely to thrive. Their castings have had high mineral content, and are the foundation upon which the topsoil itself is built.
• Earwigs look like small beetles, except they look as though they bite from both ends. This is true metaphorically as well as literally. They good news is that they eat many small insects and their larvae, their favorite being codling moth. The bad news is that they can just as readily make a perfect ruin of the plants in the garden, so be aware of the earwig and its two sets of teeth.
• As with many other garden pests, grasshoppers will do little damage when present in small numbers; however, an infestation of them will mean damage in plague-like proportions. On the bright side, they make great food for birds and chickens.
• Hoverflies are your friends, so don't see these odd, wasp-shaped little insects as enemies. They are the aerial support a gardener needs, as they are a significant factor for maintaining a healthy garden. Their prey includes scale insects, mealy bugs and mites. Their larvae eat aphids, codling moth larvae, caterpillars and slugs.
• The lacewing is the deceptively lovely adult form of the savage, assassin-like creature we know as the ant lion, whose little conical pits are the final resting place of innumerable millions of aphids and ants every season.
• Ladybirds have a great appetite for aphids, thrips and the larvae of many other leaf-eating insects. A single adult ladybird can devour up to 400 aphids a day. It is no wonder that the presence of a ladybird in the house is considered a sign of good luck!
• When we come across millipedes in the garden, the common reaction is to regard them with suspicion and disgust. Having a few of them in the garden is a good thing, as they are part of the waste disposal and aeration crew.
• The Praying Mantis is like some ferocious killer of legend. Adults and larvae alike will maim and devour most beetles, bugs, wasps, spiders, flies and caterpillars, so that these pests do not overgrow. However, their appetite also includes beneficial insects such as bees and other predatory wasps.
• Spiders might be seen as a nuisance, but their presence in the garden is a good one. A garden bereft of spider webs seems almost unnatural, as these creatures catch many airborne pests in their webs. Don’t squash this ‘bug’. It is helpful to have around, and many garden spiders are beautiful and fascinating to watch for their own sake.
• Wasp larvae require a high-protein diet, and so the adult of the species hunts slugs, codling moth larvae, thrips, stink bugs, weevils, grubs, caterpillars and scale insects. Their presence can benefit the garden, so be sparing with the wasp spray.
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