Beneficial insects are looking for a very diverse habitat so the more diverse your garden the more of them you will draw in. Wild flowers, sometimes considered "weeds" by many, are a larger draw then the cultivated flower species we normally grow because they have not yet been over hybridized.

Here is a link that might be useful: Attracting beneficial insects

I grow lots of flowers in and around the veggie garden. Aside from the plants you mention, bees like cosmos, poppies, zinnias, alyssum, Limnanthes, Phacelia...but what all the insects really, really love is flowering veggies, especially brassicas and Umbelliferae.
I don't try to deter anything with plants: I find if I keep the soil healthy and the plants well watered, 'bad' insects are not an issue.
We don't have some of the really awful American pests like SVB or bean beetles though...

Bees are good, not just Honeybees,there is Mason bee, Bumble bees.

Here is a link that might be useful: Native pollinators

Unfortunately the best way to attract a natural population of beneficial insects is to have an abnormally high population of pest insects. For example, if you only have a few aphids, you will never be able to have enough for a meal in the world of ladybugs. However, if you plant a plant we call butterfly weed, it will attract more than enough aphids to bring in the ladybugs. The plant is called butterfly weed because it is not pretty enough to call a plant and because butterflies like to visit. Around here the recommendation is to plant it somewhere hidden from view or at the outer edges of the garden. Aphids seem to prefer that plant and will ignore your plants (that's the theory).

Why must you have a population of pests first? Because animals don't go where there is an inadequate food supply. In the case of ladybugs, it has to be really adequate. What makes this hard for the impatient gardener is that aphids reproduce faster than the ladybugs. Ladybugs require several weeks to go through the cycle from eggs to hungry larvae. But before you can have your very own eggs, you first have to entice the lady bugs come to the garden. Aphids, on the other hand, are born pregnant and are laying their own eggs 5 days after hatching from their own eggs. At least the predator is assured of having a big meal when it comes of age.

Another way to keep pest insects off/away is to have healthy plants. Quite often organic gardeners do not have to deal with pests because of the organic materials. Spraying the leaves and stems of a plant with liquid seaweed (3 ounces per gallon) quite often improves the health of the plant and allows it to resist pests. If I felt like getting into another 3,000 word essay I could get into why this works, but it is a genetic thing. I also find that fertilizing with corn meal helps my roses resist aphids. In fact I have not had an aphid on my roses since the day after I first used corn meal. This is the principle reason I switched from chemicals.

I've tried growing flowers as well to attract beneficial insects. The problem I'm having is that if those flowers aren't blooming, they don't attract anything. I have a black carpenter bee that visits my squash plants every morning and lands on each bright yellow blossom faithfully. I've got four plants growing right now so there is always at least 2 blossoms open each day.

Echium candicans is my top bee attractor, tough to even walk past them April-July unless one is very comfortable around bee swarms. Cilantro and basil gone to seed are next, cilantro beating out basil for drawing a wider variety of pollinators.

My Eryngium planum 'Blaukappe' is hands down my best attractor of every size and shape of pollinator. Problem is it's aroma. In bloom its somewhat similar to, well, sweat socks after someone hiked the Grand Canyon...both down and up.

tj

I really like this forum, but I hate reading tirades about chemicals every time I go looking for information on plants. Look, everything is a chemical in the world, even your "organic" fertilizers are chemicals. Let's distinguish "bad chemicals" from "good chemicals". Bad chemicals are like herbicides and pesticides. Good chemicals include Nitrogen, Phosphorous, Potassium (NPK) etc...

Did you know that plants CAN NOT absorb anything until it is broken down into it's respective chemicals. That means your hog pee that you spray on your plants has to be broken down by bacteria into it's respective ion and then the plant can absorb it through it's roots etc... "organic" aka carbon based molecules are too large, and are not absorbed by plants whatsoever. So you can wait for the organic compounds to be broken down into it's respective Nitrogen, phosphorous ions, or provide a chemical fertilizer which provides those directly. Life would be simple if it was all that was involved, if you did this in hydroponics you would only need chemical fertilizers. But guess what, we don't have that substrate/soil/medium, so we encourage bugs, worms, fungi, bacteria in the soil, so we need long term solutions, which is where a long term breakdown of "organic" material is beneficial.

I use a ton of mulch and manure every year. But I also use chemical fertilizers because, guess what, they work best because they provide the plant exactly what it needs. An intelligent understanding of long term health of the soil vs. immediate needs of plants goes a long way to growing plants well. Realize that none of the gardening we do is in ANY way what exists in nature. What we have done is perfect the environment for plants. Don't be ignorant of this fact that most of the plants we eat, most of the flowers we love do not exist in "nature". They exist because we created them through thousands of years of cultivation.

With that said, I'll list my most beneficial insect plants which I cultivate extensively in my small area:

Agastache (any type, bar none my best plant) sometimes called "giant hyssop"
Salvia sp. (reasonably well)
Butterfly weed (asclepias sp.)
Echinacea (ok, not great)
thyme (smaller flowers)
Lavendar (ok, not great)
Gladiolus (ok, but do you really want bees getting high?)

Not great
Coreopsis
Day Lilies
Russian Sage (Perovskia)

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My impression, based on reading and experience, is that plants in the Umbelliferae and Liliaceae families have the most beneficial effect as pest deterrents. Fennel works for me against flea beetles, and the onion family against imported cabbage butterflies. I think the best strategy is to pursue the broadest possible diversity within and around the garden, and to avoid concentrated planting of any one crop, which will naturally attract predator species and promote rapid proliferation of diseases.

I grow lots of native perennials and annuals, herbs, and tropical annuals. My gardens are usually teeming with all kinds of insects and pollinators. I adore most of them - they are my little buddies! (Do not like bugs like slugs, aphids, earwigs, and some beetles, but they have their place I suppose!)

Someone above mentioned the Umbelliferae - which I assume are plants in the carrot family like Dill, fennel, parsley, etc. - these attract tons of beneficial insects when they are flowering. Also these are host plants to some Swallowtail butterflies.

The Asclepias species attract tons of pollinators, and have the additional benefit of being a host plant to Monarch butterflies. However, the foliage attracts aphids and many other insects too - I raise Monarchs, so I patrol and eliminate the insect predators regularly. Dchall, by butterfly weed do you mean Asclepias tuberosa? This can be a beautiful ornamental plant! I've got it growing out front and center in the Xeric garden along with Daylilies, Lupines, native short-prairie grasses, and it looks great all season.
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This link to an episode of Growing a Greener World might be of some interest to some people.

Here is a link that might be useful: Growing a Greener World 223

The best attracter of honey bees I've come across is spotted knapweed, but I would stongly recommend against growing it because it's hyper invasive. The best attracters of parasites, based on tests in Miochigan and my own experience, are boneset and sweet allysum. Regards, Peter B.

My main method for attracting "beneficials" is to avoid pesticides and to have things that bloom mixed in with the vegetables. Alyssum and herbs make a nice underplanting for chilis and tomatoes.

However, the main pollinators in my garden are not honeybees, they are "alkali bees" and other native pollinators. They aren't as visible, but I can hear them when they "buzz pollinate" the tomatoes.

As for the predator population, I have spiders, geckos, paper wasps, lizards, syrphid flies, the occasional tarantula hawk, and bug-eating birds.

Here is a link that might be useful: Natural Pest Control