Grow These Two Gorgeous Plants Together Near Your Home To Naturally Repel Spiders

Spiders are one of nature's most useful pesticides, keeping down the populations of bugs that bring disease or eat your plants. They are also great food for the birds that may visit your yard. But if you have a mortal dread of spiders or just don't want them near your home, there are ways to keep them at bay. You can keep spiders out of the house with several natural scents they can't stand, or you can just as easily grow two garden favorites — mums (Chrysanthemum spp.) and marigolds (Tagetes spp.) — on your deck or porch or around your foundation. Both tactics can repel spiders without you having to resort to chemical deterrents, but mums and marigolds also add beauty to your home.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that spiders, in general, avoid strongly scented plants. While there are few studies of marigolds or chrysanthemums used as spider repellents, both plants are well-known for their bug-repellent properties. Marigolds or their essential oils have been shown to repel mosquitoes, beetles, and sandflies, while chrysanthemums contain natural oils that are extracted to make a natural insecticide, pyrethrum, which makes chrysanthemums double as a mosquito repellent. Chrysanthemum oil has also been proven to repel insects like flies, ants, and cockroaches, as well as ticks, which are a type of arachnid. So it stands to reason that spiders, another arachnid, would be repelled by the scent of it.

Chrysanthemums are tender perennials, often grown as annuals because they've been pampered in greenhouses and are too weak to resist the onslaughts of winter. But garden-hardy mums are perennials that can be grown in USDA zones 3 through 9, though some only survive the winter in a narrower band of zones. Chrysanthemums will come back in subsequent years if they are have been hardened off in their early growth period. Plant them in full sun or part shade in a rich soil that drains well. If you're growing them in pots, make sure they have drainage holes in the bottom. If you're planting them in the ground, dig a hole twice the size of the pot that the plant came in, backfill the hole with loose compost or a rich potting soil, place the plant in the hole, and then liberally water it in. Well-treated, mature mums can grow as small, compact container plants or tall, cut flowers.

Marigolds make great companions to chrysanthemums. Marigolds attract parasitic wasps, which feed off leafminers, a typical chrysanthemum pest. As annuals in most zones, marigolds bloom all summer, so you can plant them far ahead of chrysanthemums, which are usually planted in fall. Their yellow and orange flowers make great fall colors to accent those of mums. Like chrysanthemums, their growth ranges from petite 4-inch plants to giants as tall as 4 feet. To grow marigolds, like chrysanthemums, they should be planted in full sun. They will do well in a wide range of soil types, as long as they have good drainage, so they can handle the same rich soil chrysanthemums need. Contact with marigolds and chrysanthemums can cause skin irritation, while some people develop eye or nose irritation from the scent of marigolds.