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Sweet Alyssum Volunteers
In a nutshell: Encourage every volunteer alyssum you have.
The whole story: Go right ahead and grow sweet alyssum (Lobularia maritima) throughout your garden. This tidy, low-growing annual flower is highly ornamental, perfumes the garden with its rich honey scent, makes a great living mulch, flowers early from direct seeding, and self-seeds easily but not excessively in future years. Alyssum is especially valuable because, as you've noticed, its flowers are highly attractive to beneficial insects, which are key to organic pest control.
To maximize the pest-control properties of sweet alyssum, be sure to plant this cold-hardy annual as early as possible, among any crops in which you've had aphid problems. Research at Colorado State and Oregon State universities has confirmed that sweet alyssum's flowers are rich in nectar that attracts hoverflies, whose larvae feed on aphids inside tight places where other good bugs can't go. Hoverflies are especially helpful in early spring, when most other beneficials are not yet active.
