Good garden bugs: 9 beneficial insects your garden needs

Key points

• Gardeners are being urged to stop spraying pests, because most pesticides also kill beneficial insects that feed on them. Gardener Mel Logozzo, who has spent eight years turning her paved backyard into a food and native flower garden, has written about nine kinds of helpful bugs.
• They include ladybirds, lacewings, parasitic wasps, assassin bugs, mantids and hoverflies. The guide also explains how to tell helpful bugs from pests, and how to encourage them with flowers, mulch and leaf litter.
• Pests such as aphids breed quickly, so a few pests can attract predators that keep numbers in balance.