Create a frog & toad abode
Find out how to make amphibians feel more at home in your garden, with a pond, damp shade and shelter
Why do we find frogs and toads so appealing? Perhaps it’s their cute expressions as they sit upright, eyes wide. Or maybe they seem vulnerable without a means of defence? Whatever the reason, they evoke curiosity and fascination at all their life stages, from spawn to tadpole to adult. Indeed, such is our affection for them that, each spring, dedicated volunteers around the UK help toads cross busy roads, while children’s book characters include Beatrix Potter’s Jeremy Fisher to Mr Toad in Wind in the Willows and, more recently, Trevor, Neville Longbottom’s pet toad in the Harry Potter books. For us gardeners, the love is all the greater as they snap up some of the creepy-crawly pests that target our crops and flowers. The sad news is that garden frogs and toads appear to be in decline. The RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch included a question about how often they were seen in 2014 and again this January, and over the four-year period, monthly frog sightings were down by 10% and toads by 8%.
Frogs and toads actually move home with the seasons
Fortunately, there’s much we can do to help them in gardens and even small measures can see their numbers boom in a few years. The secret is understanding that frogs and toads actually move home with the seasons: they need one in spring, another for summer and autumn, and a third in winter. If any of these homes is absent in your garden, they’ll struggle, so helping them is about ensuring they can find the right habitat at the right time of year. This need for multiple homes is all to do with their lifestyle. Frogs and toads are amphibians, which means ‘two kinds of life’ – in water and out. We tend to think of them as aquatic creatures, but actually they only need to visit ponds in order to lay their spawn. This is because their eggs don’t have shells and the larvae that hatch breathe underwater through gills. However, once they’ve made the miraculous transformation into an adult, they’re mostly land creatures, breathing mainly through their lungs, but with the added complication that their skin must always be moist. It means that ponds are little more than a place to date, mate and lay eggs. Once that’s done, most of the adults head off in search of somewhere shady where they can sit out the scorching days, but where they have ready access for night-time hunting trips through your borders. Then, in winter, they’ll need a secure frost-free place in which to hibernate, tucked away out of sight in a deep doze. Whatever the season, safety from predators is a must because frogs in particular are a prime target for everything from herons to foxes, cats to grass snakes. Toads are more fortunate; they exude a toxin from their skin that makes them quite distasteful, but their tendency to head to traditional winter hibernation sites, often a mile or so away from their breeding ponds, makes them especially vulnerable to cars. In some ways it’s a miracle that any survive; it’s estimated that just five out of every thousand tadpoles make it through to adulthood. But that’s where we gardeners can help – with just a little effort and ingenuity, we can increase their chances of survival from one year to the next, and of raising the next generation. ✿