Guarding your garden against ants, termites, and other common pests

3/02/2021

We’ve all been there: you look out over the paradise that is your garden, at your hours and hours of toil and hard work at keeping its grass green and flowers blooming, only to realise that ants, termites, spiders, wasps, and all manner of other unwanted pests have come to infest your hard work like an invading army.

Not all insects can be pests – some can even be helpful to gardens or to the aphid ecosystem as a whole – but still, it is up to you to know how comfortable you are with your garden, lawn, or landscaping project feeling like a neighbouring kingdom for the unseen menace that is an unwanted insect population.

Obviously it can be a simple process to hire an exterminator or pest control professional to remove the unwanted creepy crawlies in your garden after the fact. But if you’re interested in avoiding the expense, or in considering insect control within the process of gardening or landscaping in general, here are a few tips on how to keep some of the more common outdoor pests under control.

Ants

Although they might seem like the endless marauders of the insect world, ant control can be relatively easy. Their small, sandy nests are unmissable, and can be eradicated simply by pouring boiling water in them, or else spraying simple insecticides deep in the grooves of your garden pathways and pavers. If you’re working with landscapers or earthworkers, you might consult on how to renovate your pathways or else lay down new, stronger materials that are harder for ants to burrow through.

But ants can also become more troublesome the deeper into your garden itself they live in digging the tunnels of their colonies through the roots of your plants. Here, it can be better to resort to natural solutions to keep your plants from being damaged by insecticides themselves. Ants have a natural dislike of peppers, jam, honey, Borax, and sugar water, so laying some down among your plants can help shoo them from the area.

Termites

Termites can be much more destructive than ants, so it is better to think about preventing them rather than controlling them. Landscapers will know of many termite prevention techniques that they can apply during garden construction: installing monitoring or baiting stations, constructing termite barriers around structures, or even applying special chemical resistants through pipes underground.

In general, though, remember to check your garden for any old or dead pieces of wood laying around – especially stumps or fallen tree branches. If it has hollowed or feels light, there’s a good chance that wood has become a termite nest already, so remember to throw out any of it that might be laying around before those wood-hungry pests can move in.

Spiders

Many common garden spiders are not deadly, and can even be helpful in catching many of the other pests deep in your garden so you don’t have to. Still, if you’re the kind of person who wants to keep icky things like them out of your life entirely, it can be an easy process to regularly clearing out their webs or getting rid of other insects to get rid of their food supply so that they will decide to move out of the area on their own.

The more dangerous breeds of spider – in particular redbacks or Funnel webs – can be more of a concern. These types are much more common to breed and reside in dark, hidden spaces deep in your garden, so during the landscaping process it will be a good idea to remove any large rocks, wood piles, compost heaps, or any other places they might crawl out of.

Wasps

Wasps can be dangerous, but like bees are generally more of a nuisance. It’s easy to miss a build-up of their nests somewhere in your house or garden until you find them buzzing around, so remember to keep them from finding your area appealing by keeping your bins shut tightly, don’t leave food lying around, and clear out any fruits that might have fallen in your garden so that wasps are not attracted by the sweetness.

Like spiders, wasps can also be easy to convince to move on rather than stick around, especially if they think there are already wasp colonies in the area. For this, you can even try building fake wasp nests out of brown paper and twine to mimic the shape of a natural nest.

Keeping your garden safe – and beautiful

At the end of the day, you don’t want to let all the hard work you’ve put into making your garden the paradise that it is be spoiled by letting too many pests move in. Insects might be a way of life in the natural world, but you don’t have to feel like a weekend warrior in keeping them from becoming a hassle if you keep insect control as part of the landscaping process, rather than a problem that comes after it. At the same time, if you work with a landscaping or construction company like Welsh Industries in making your dream garden project a reality, you’ll never have to handle the insect problem alone.

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