Larry Smith and the Riverside Gardens team talk all things pots, plants and pruning in their weekly gardening column.
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As the weather warms up and the garden starts growing, we start to notice a lot more insect activity in among it.
Aphids suddenly appear on the fresh growth of the roses, caterpillars start chewing the veggie plants and all sorts of little creatures seem to turn up overnight and take up lodgings in our garden.
Often the first thought when we see them on our plants is, what can I spray them with?
But not all these creatures are here to feast on your garden, a lot of them are here feasting in your garden on the insects that damage our plants.
So, before reaching for the spray bottle, it is worth stopping and having a closer look.
As not every insect in the garden is causing trouble, many of them are here to lend a hand.
Ladybirds are probably the most familiar of our helpful insects.
Most people know the adult ladybird with its round body and spotted back, but the young ladybird looks completely different.
Ladybird larvae have a long, dark, spiky body that can look a little nasty if you have never seen one before.
Unfortunately, they are sometimes mistaken for pests and removed from the garden.
This is a shame, because both the adults and the larvae feed on aphids and other small, soft-bodied insects.
Hoverflies are another helpful garden visitor, and as their name suggests, they can often be seen hovering over flowers or out in the open before quickly darting away.
They look a little like small bees or wasps, but they are not aggressively or harmful.
Adult hoverflies feed on nectar and pollen, helping with pollination as they move from flower to flower.
Their larvae also earn their keep by feeding on aphids and other soft-bodied pests.
The larvae look like small green or brownish grubs and are easily mistaken for caterpillars.
The difference is in what they are doing, a caterpillar will usually be chewing the leaves, while a hoverfly larva is more likely to be moving around among aphids or crawling around looking for them without doing any damaging to the leaves.
Lacewings are another insect worth looking out for.
The adults have delicate, almost transparent large wings compared to the size of their body and are often seen around gardens at night.
Lacewing larvae look like tiny crocodiles with long legs and curved pincers at the front and are active successful predators with an enormous appetite for aphids.
They also eat whiteflies, mealybugs, some scale, small caterpillars, mites and thrips, making them very beneficial in the garden.
Parasitic wasps regularly go unnoticed in the garden, but most depending on the species are good workers in the garden.
Their young feed on pest insects such as moth larvae and eggs, aphids and mealybugs.
The adults are also good pollinators as they search for nectar.
Most of these are tiny and bear little resemblance to the larger wasps that people are familiar with.
Predatory mites are another good worker in the garden.
They are extremely small and are often never noticed without the use of a magnifying glass.
They feed on pest mites like two spotted mite and red spider mite which are just as small, but they can do a lot of damage quickly.
Predatory mites also feed on thrips, which are much larger than themselves and can also feed on pollen when their normal source of food is low.
They are a good example of why we should not assume that every tiny creature moving beneath a leaf is damaging the plant as they do look very similar to the pests they are cleaning up.
One of the best ways to encourage beneficial insects is to make sure there is something flowering in the garden through as much of the year as possible.
This does not require a special insect garden. Flowering herbs can be included in the vegetable patch, while annuals, perennials and flowering shrubs can provide food and shelter throughout the rest of the backyard.
Pesticides need to be used carefully in the home garden.
A broad-spectrum treatment may kill the pest we are after, but it can also affect the insects that were helping to control it.
Removing every aphid or pest may also remove the food source that attracted ladybirds, lacewings and hoverflies in the first place.
Gardens need some balance, and a small number of pests does not always mean that we have to race out and spray the whole garden.
However, this does not mean we should ignore serious infestations.
It simply means observing the plant first and using the least disruptive control that will solve the problem.
Although you may not recognise every member of this quiet workforce, and knowing some of them are almost not visible to the naked eye, you should not assume they are not doing an important job.
So, if you are unsure of what a certain insect is or what is causing damage to your plants, bring in a bagged sample and we can have a look at it under a microscope.
Then hopefully, we can put you on the right track if it does need to be controlled.