My Secret to Glorious Summer Roses Starts in Winter – I Get my Garden Birds to Do the Pest Control

I’ll fess up from the get-go: I’m a lazy gardener. Don’t get me wrong – I spend plenty of time out in the garden, but I always work to a ratio of minimum effort for maximum reward. I choose low-maintenance plants that don’t need much molly-coddling and metal patio furniture that doesn’t need re-treating every year, and collect time-saving garden hacks like they’re priceless gold coins. The result? By summer, I get to put my feet up on that patio sofa and enjoy my gorgeous garden, rather than be forever tending it.

And this little trick to keep your roses healthy is a game-changer! I do it every year, and it never fails to keep my roses free from pests such as aphids and scale insects, and means I never have to resort to spraying or – yuck! – scraping them off by hand. My pesticide-free garden is more wildlife-friendly and, free from the stress of these sap-sucking insects, my roses grow strong and healthy, laden with beautiful blooms.

The Easy Trick to Pest-Free Roses

This hack is insanely easy yet effective, as long as you take action right now. You’re going to delegate the job of pest control to your garden birds and, to show your feathered friends where their juicy new aphid-feasting joint is – aka your prized roses – all you need do is hang up some suet balls.

Goldfinches, chickadees, titmice, sparrows and wrens are all voracious eaters of aphids, particularly when they're feeding their young in spring. They’ll also pick off thrips, scale insects, spider mites and sawfly larvae, all of which can distort rose growth and cause a rapid decline in plant health.

These omnivorous garden birds rely on seed through the winter but, as spring approaches, they switch to a mostly insect-based diet. When their chicks hatch, there’s a sharp increase in feeding requirements, and all those tiny insects ravaging your roses provide the perfect bite-sized, high-protein tidbits to nourish their young.

Your only job, then, is to show your local avian pest-control team where this fast-food joint is. Do this in February, when the weather is still cold enough that birds are hungry for food to survive, and offer high-fat suet balls that supply warming energy in spades, and it’s easy. Simply hang a few single-ball feeders on stronger rose stems and, in a couple of weeks, the birds will find them. These petite feeders look pretty, too, adorning a still-bare winter garden.

Hooked Single Suet Feeders

Why it Works to Prevent Pests Too

There’s another benefit to hanging the feeders up before spring, too. As soon as the birds start spending more time around this new food source, they’ll discover a heap of tasty insects overwintering on and around your roses.

Several pests overwinter on roses as eggs laid on stems and buds, larvae in the surrounding soil and leaf debris and, in milder climates, as active adults. Aphids, especially the rose aphid (Macrosiphum rosae), commonly overwinter as eggs laid on rose stems. Call in the bird brigade now to reduce the number of eggs left to hatch, and you'll instantly lower the risk of an aphid infestation ruining your rose blooms later on. And every egg counts because rose aphids multiply incredibly quickly: a single female can produce up to 90 offspring in 7–10 days in optimal conditions, and an aphid nymph is often already pregnant when it's born!

Rose scale insects (Aulacaspis rosae) also overwinter as eggs, beneath an encrusted waxy substance on rose stems, while spider mites often shelter in a dormant state among fallen leaves beneath the plant. Sawflies, also known as rose slugs, spend the winter as pupae in the soil and emerge as adult wasps in early spring to lay eggs on leaf edges. These only take a week or two to hatch into the small, pale green caterpillar-like creatures that quickly skeletonize rose leaves, so it makes good sense to have your bird army ready and waiting to pick them off.

Balls to Tempt the Right Birds

I hope you try this clever little hack for yourself, and it works just as well in your garden as it does in mine. Feeding birds is always a delight, but when it helps keep your backyard blooming, it's even better!