Every year in late summer it's the same again: yellow and black striped stinging insects hum around the patio table in droves and compete with cake, fruit and grilled meat. With clever garden planting, however, you can significantly reduce the annoying hustle and bustle.
Lemon verbena doesn't just make a delicious tea
The seasonal boom of wasps and hornets
Wasps that occur in our latitudes are mainly the German and common wasps and the hornet, which is the only species living in this country that belongs to the genus of real wasps. All wasp species have more or less the same state cycle. In the spring, the queen establishes the colony and creates both the first brood combs of the nest and the first generation of eggs. This is followed by further generations with the help of the hatched workers, until new sex animals are bred in late summer.
This is the time when the wasp colony is growing rapidly and the workers have to fetch vast amounts of food for their offspring and for themselves - we sometimes feel this in the form of an outright wasp invasion at our breakfast tables and outdoor barbecues.
So it's worth having plants in the garden that the annoying pests don't like at all. These include, above all, herbs with specific smells and a high content of essential oils. The good thing about it: you can benefit from the fragrant plants in a pleasant way!
What wasps and hornets do not fly at all
Wasps turn up their odor-sensitive noses especially at the following plants:
- basil
- lemon verbena
- lavender
- incense plant
The fresh, spicy smell of basil is a tried and tested repellent for wasps. The annual kitchen herb can be cultivated in a bucket during the summer. It exudes a pleasant scent on the terrace and can also be used for Caprese salads at barbecues and snacks on the terrace.
Wasps generally do not like lemony smells. Lemon Verbena gives off an intensely lemony-ethereal scent, which you can also intensify by shaking the herb. Lemon verbena or lemon balm is ideal for refreshing house teas.
For most people, the scent of lavender is a wonderful smell and at the same time keeps the terrace free from wasps - above all, it blooms from July, when the wasp season begins.
The frankincense plant is also an option - the ornamental leaf plant, which is not related to frankincense but has a very similar smell, also keeps mosquitoes away.