When the days are still nice in late summer, you are more than happy to enjoy them in the garden or on the terrace - with a glass of lemonade or an ice cream in hand. If only it weren't for the wasps. With fragrant lavender in the garden you can keep the pests in check.

Lavender keeps wasps away from the patio

Lavender - not for wasp noses

Lavender has been one of the most valued aromatic plants for thousands of years. In perfumes, in scented oils, in clothes bags or in the kitchen, the Mediterranean plant has a real classic status. In the form of tea infusions, it has also been proven to have a calming, sleep-inducing effect. With its silvery-green, needle-like foliage and deep purple flowers, lavender is also highly ornamental.

In this respect, lavender is an attractive garden plant for most people. The practical thing is that wasps don't like it at all. Its ethereal, somewhat herbaceous smell is far removed from everything that they prefer based on their nutritional needs, namely sweets in particular. Therefore, they avoid places where there is an intense lavender smell.

An overview of our advantages and disadvantages for the wasps:

  • Pleasant scent for us
  • Blossoms can be used, for example, for clothes bags or for the kitchen
  • High jewelry value
  • Smell repellent to wasps

Favorable flowering time

A great advantage that lavender has in its function as a wasp repellent is its flowering time, which coincides with the peak of the wasp population. From July it unfolds its flowers and can then be of good use in full stock around the terrace. With a Mediterranean-style bed, which you can equip with several lavender bushes or border like a hedge, you create a romantic and at the same time wasp-free zone for relaxed garden stays.

It is also practical that lavender is hardy. So you don't have to worry about planting to repel wasps every year.

Important: use fragrances

When buying lavender perennials that are to be used specifically against wasps, you must of course be careful to use scented varieties. The types of lavender with the highest content of essential oils and, accordingly, the most intense scent are real lavender, also known as scented lavender, and large speik. Their botanical names are Lavandula angustifolia or Lavandula officinalis and Lavandula latifolia.

Also effective as an oil

You don't want to or can't plant lavender for reasons of taste or space? No problem, because you can of course use the scent of lavender in other ways. For example in the form of scented oil, which you let evaporate in a scented light while dining in the garden. A practical side effect is that the flame also keeps the insects away.

Another way to use lavender oil is to put some in water and spray it over a water disperser.

And in yet another way, lavender oil helps against wasp plagues: When rubbed into the skin, its essential oils also relieve pain and itching from stings!

Category:

Animals in the garden