Pest management in urban landscape presents unique challenges because of the tremendous diversity of ornamental plants, each with its own complement of insect pests. A new research project has been initiated at the LSU AgCenter Hammond Research Station focusing on alternative pest monitoring approaches. One approach will be using phenology events of flowering landscape plants as indicators to predict pest activities.

A phenology research garden was planted in fall 2007 at the LSU AgCenter Hammond Research Station in Hammond, La. Data collected in 2008 indicated that a sequence of phonological events in advance of pest activities is available from 15 ornamental plants for predicting landscape pest activity.