This Common Tick Myth Might Change How You Protect Yourself Outdoors

Creating a backyard oasis full of beautiful landscaping that you can enjoy with your family and friends is every homeowner's dream. But if you live in tick country, the idea of creating a lush garden with a shady tree canopy may give you pause. Are you just building the perfect tick habitat, where the dastardly creatures can lie in wait, jumping out at you from your bushes and raining down on you from your trees? Ticks spread a variety of dangerous diseases, and you aren't being paranoid if you're worried about them taking up shop in your yard. But it's a myth that ticks can jump out at you from your foliage, and there are plenty of practical ways to keep them at bay outside.

Ticks are pretty simple creatures. They spend their days creeping amongst the leaf litter or crawling to the end of a grass stem or low-lying shrub to wave their forelegs around until they latch on to an unlucky passer-by. Unlike fleas, ticks cannot jump at all. They will crawl toward you if they sense you're near, but they aren't very fast. Ticks prefer to hang out in higher-humidity areas of grasses and low shrubs and wait around for their prey. They're unlikely to be found above your head among breezy tree branches, and getting up to those limbs would be quite an effort for little creepers who can't fly. If you do find a tick on your head, it didn't jump down from a tree to land on you. It probably crawled up your body to get there.

Instead of worrying about ticks up above, you should focus on looking down. Grassy and bushy areas are the preferred home for ticks, so keeping your shrubs and grasses cut back from where people and pets play will create distance from these pests. Ticks aren't active in freezing temperatures, but they overwinter in leaf litter and underbrush, so keep your yard well-manicured and avoid creating spots where they can re-emerge in spring. Clean up yard debris and move brush and wood piles away from areas of your yard where you hang out. Avoid contact with ticks while maintaining your landscape or gardening by wearing proper clothing and tick repellent.

Along with removing their habitat, you can actively repel ticks from your yard. Making DIY tick tubes that contain the tick insecticide permethrin and placing them around your yard will attract mice that carry ticks, and it's a more targeted approach than spraying insecticide that can kill all kinds of beneficial insects. There are also plenty of tick-repelling plants you can put in your yard, including lavender, rosemary, and mint, flowers like chrysanthemum and marigolds, and landscaping staples like boxwood and wisteria. So go ahead and create that beautiful garden without worrying about ticks jumping out at you from every corner.