When you see something amiss in the flower garden, should you immediately run for the spray can? The answer isn't always black and white. Learn how to identify, when to tolerate, and when to exterminate the 12 most common insects that visit your blooming landscape.
1. Ants
Ants may not be directly harmful to flowers, but they have a symbiotic relationship with aphids, and their swarms are most unwelcome on cut peonies.More »2. Aphids
No one ever uses the word "aphid," it's always plural. Hordes of aphids appear to come from nowhere in the spring, sucking the life from your flowers. You can stop these pests without resorting to chemical pesticides.More »3. Armyworms
Did you know that a new generation of armyworms can develop every 24 days in the summertime? These gregarious feeders can quickly skeletonize leaves and munch through flower buds, leaving little plant material behind to save with treatments.More »4. Caterpillars
We love to attract butterflies, but hate seeing their babies munch on our plants. Learn about the good, the bad, and the hungry caterpillars in your flower garden.More »5. Cutworms
Cutworms have one goal: to cut down a mini forest of your flowers, one seedling at a time.More »6. Fungus Gnats
To see a cloud of gnats rising from your houseplants is reason enough to go on an extermination mission, but if you knew what these bugs were up to under the soil level you would have zero tolerance for these insidious pests.More »7. Lace Bugs
Lace bugs are different from lacewings, which are beneficial insects in the flower garden. Lace bugs get their common name from their ornate wings. Don’t let these delicate looking insects fool you: they’re out to get your azaleas.More »8. Mealybugs
If you’ve ever observed a cottony, whitish growth on the stems and leaves of your garden plants, don’t dismiss it as a benign condition. Mealybugs are masquerading as mere white fluff, and the waxy covering of these honeydew-excreting insects makes them difficult to control.More »9. Slugs
These cephalopods make cute characters in children's books, but their hungry (hangry?) rasping mouths are not child's play when it comes to protecting your garden. Slugs and snails can cause a great deal of damage in the flower garden in short order. You can outsmart them with a few organic controls.More »10. Spider Mites
Webs usually signal the presence of beneficial spiders, but there’s nothing helpful about the spider mite. If your gardens tend to be on the hot and dusty side in the middle of summer, you must monitor your plants for these minuscule pests.More »11. Thrips
It’s bad enough that these insect pests literally suck the life from our flowers. But did you know they can transmit diseases, too? In the words of Bugs Bunny, This Means War.More »12. Ticks
Ticks may not target our flowers, but their presence keeps us from tending to our blooms, especially in the woodland garden. At best, they deliver a case of the heebie-jeebies, and at worst, they transmit Lyme disease to their victims. You don’t have to bomb your entire landscape with chemicals to control these pests.More »
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