Plant Roles: Insectaries

An insectary is a plant that attracts beneficial insects. Just as we desire to use certain plants to fulfill certain roles, we also want the benefits that come from thousands and thousands of little workers. The best way to invite these helpers to our yards and gardens is to supply them with the pollen and nectar they like to eat.

There are a few that I know of off the top of my head that grow well in Utah County and function well as insectaries. These include yarrow, mint, dandelion, comfrey, sunflower, violets, cosmos, clover, and lobelia.  And, of course, these function best as insectaries when you let them bloom. Hopefully it is obvious why that is so. This list is by no means comprehensive. I have included below three other lists - I am sure that there are many more that can be found in a web search - of plants that make good insectaries.

OrganicGardening.com has a long list of both annual and perennial insectaries. Along with that list, they also include an article about using flower borders as a means of encouraging beneficial insects to hang around your garden beds. They include their top eleven choices for insectaries to use in these beneficial bug flower borders, which I am eager to learn about and probably include in my own yard and gardens.

Going with a similar idea, the USDA's National Agroforestry Center (NAC) recommend using conservation buffers. These conservation buffers are similar to OrganicGardening.com's insectary flower borders in that they should include plants that appeal to beneficial insects. In addition to explaining about conservation buffers, the NAC also has a list of beneficials, what pests they help manage, and which plants those beneficials find particularly inviting. After just glancing through that list, it would seem that plants belonging to the Aster family (Asteraceae) have the most insect appeal and it would be hard to go wrong in adding some species from that family to your insectary collection.

Finally, Mother Earth News online has another list of both annuals and perennials, including some woody plants, that you can go through and use to determine what to add to spruce up your yard and increase your good insect vibes. The list also indicates each plant's scientific name, which is great when you are trying to get a particular plant from a nursery or find the right packet of seeds. Some of the plants even are linked to sources of images and/or more information to help you become more familiar with that particular species. And, at the bottom, is a list of some of the references that were used to generate the list, in case you would like to dive deeper into learning about insectaries and their benefits.