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Photo Credit: Sarah Landicho

Mosquitos can be quite the nuisance just when you're trying to relax!

Peonies and the Tiphia Wasp

Peonies are a beautiful spring-blooming perennial that produce some of the largest and intensely fragrant flowers. (There’s one cultivar called ‘Dinner Plate’ – you can imagine its size!) These beautiful flowers attract a beneficial insect called the Tiphia wasp, which eats the larvae of Japanese beetles (a pest that can wreak havoc on summer blooms). We usually refer to Japanese beetle larvae as grubs. These grubs are found underground, busily munching on grass roots until they become adults and begin to munch on everything aboveground. Tiphia wasps love peony nectar. So if you plant these beautiful perennials around your garden, you can create a feeding ground for the wasps to help destroy your Japanese beetle populations. (Another spring-blooming plant enjoyed by Tiphia wasps is the forsythia.)