2 Landscaping Mistakes That Might Be Attracting Pests To Your Home
Posted on: 24 March 2015
As a new homeowner, you might be eager to put your personal stamp on your yard. After buying the right gardening tools and picking out a few flats of fresh flowers, you may have spent a Saturday afternoon beautifying your space. Although it might seem easy to make your yard attractive, a few errors could send creepy-crawly bugs straight into your home. Here are two landscaping mistakes that might be attracting pests, and what you can do to stop the migration:
1: Letting Vines Cover Your Home
Are you trying to cover up faded siding, shade your windows, or simply add a touch of nostalgia to your home's façade? If so, you might be letting vines or ivy cover part of your house. Unfortunately, although it might make your place look like it came straight out of a storybook, those vines can give pests an easy way to access your entire place. Here are a few bugs that adore vines:
- Rodents: Why would a mouse or a rat go through the trouble of plowing a tiny hole through a wall when they can climb right up to your second-story window? Rodents can easily climb on the vines that cling to your house—tracking down food sources, burrowing spots, and entryways.
- Spiders: If you are trying to rid your house of spiders, it might be hard if half of your place is covered in decorative ivy. The complicated vine systems that accompany ivy create a wonderful place for spiders to build webs and hide egg sacks.
- Snakes: Unfortunately, mice and spiders aren't the only vermin that adore ivy. Snakes are shy creatures that love shadowy, cool areas, which is why you might find them hiding in the ivy covering your home.
If you have a pest control problem and you have vines covering your home, your exterminator might recommend removing ivy as soon as possible. In addition to potentially attracting scary pests, ivy can also burrow into brick mortar and underneath siding, which can destroy the exterior of your house.
2: Not Controlling Water
After you take the time to create beautiful flowerbeds and carefully prune those hedges, you might be focused on making sure those plants get the moisture they need. Unfortunately, failure to control the flow of water around your property can also attract pests. Annoying insects like cockroaches, stink bugs, and pillbugs love water, which means you should pay special attention to these landscaping decisions:
- Land Grading: If you are trying to restructure your lawn, you might decide to add a few bags of fresh topsoil and alter the grading of your property. Unfortunately, if water starts flowing towards your house instead of away from it, it could allow moisture to seep into your basement where it could attract bugs.
- Water Features: That beautiful fountain or built-in waterfall might have seemed like a good idea, but how often do you use it? If you let water features go stagnant, they could become a breeding ground for mosquitoes.
- Sprinkler Lines: When you are focused on beautifying your yard, it might be easy to forget about checking the essential things like sprinkler lines. However, if lines or sprinkler heads become damaged, they could allow water to pool and insects to thrive.
As you landscape your yard, pay attention to the places that water settles. If you notice puddles or indoor moisture after a storm, watch out for pests. If you can keep your home dry, bugs might be less likely to infest the area.
To fend off trouble, think carefully before you make any significant changes to your yard and report new pest activity as soon as possible to a professional. Continue here for more information.
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