eTroubled newbie gardener

[Guanche]

Hi all!

We (myself & wife) moved to a new place in the city a year ago, just before spring. I suppose I had gardening in me to some extent so I started "developing" (my wife says "starting to over-crowd") it.

It is about 40m2 square or a bit less. Half of it has sun until about 3pm and the rest of the time its in a shadow -by a large buliding nearby-, the rest of the time there is reasonable light.

We have an assortment of different trees and flowers of various types (libernum, golden crest, cherry blossom, we have clematices, roses, an ivy, heather, lavender, daisies, etc). All the garden is pretty young, 2 of the trees we bought quite tall (about 2 meters) but in general everything is young.

Last year everyting was ok and nice, but this year I am seeing another side of home gardening: pests!

Last week while inspecting the garden I noticed something strange in a tree: it turned out to be a worm. After that and looking closesly I discovered most of the plants had worms.

There seems to be more than one type of pest: 1 type of worm is white and small (1cm or less), another type is green, in small (1cm again) and larger versions, I have taken out 2 worms -caterpillar like- about 2,5cm (1 inch) or so, the green worm has a black head.

I am dealing with worms by manual extraction, since the insecticide we have does not seem to work anyway.I have also bought a stronger insecticide but I am wary of using it since as the seller said, it goes into the tree, so I don't think its the most environemntal friendly.

Last year we used to have lady birds in the garden (they came naturally), but this year they are no where to be seen -even before using any insecticide- also I notice, last year the tulips used to have tons of little green small insects (they seemed to be harmless) but this year they are not there either, seems to be a downgrade in wildlife in general in the garden).

Anyway, I have cleared most of the worms by now -though they'll reproduce I suppose?-. Suddenly today I have noticed a new thing: there seems to be an ant nest in our main pot -must have happened literally overnight-. It is the first time ever having ants (it is a new building) so I wonder wether I should take a strong approach and just stuff it with anti-ants insecticide.

Also, I have noticed that under the young ivy leaves there are lots of small white eggs, are they likely to be spider eggs? -this seem to be a very spider-prone area any way-

Well, life is hectic in this garden as you see.

Thanks for any input and for reading!!

Leo