How To Attract Frogs To Your Garden Pond And Keep Them There

One of the pleasures of keeping a garden pond is to attract wildlife to it and many people look to attract frogs. As amphibians frogs are creatures that spend part of their lives in water and the rest on dry land but you might be surprised to learn that most of their time is spent out of the water. They only really return to water to lay their frogspawn but they do their feeding on land so, as they need to keep moist, they prefer damp ground.

So, How Do We Attract Frogs Into Our Garden?

To encourage frogs into the wildlife garden, it’s important to remember that they have 4 basic needs – shelter, moisture, food and a place to breed.

The Garden Pond Your garden pond should have shallow edges to allow frogs to get in and out of it with ease. At least one of the shallow edges should taper off into surrounding rough, moist vegetation such as a leafy mulch which will offer them food, shelter and hibernation. Although frogs require shelter from the heat of the summer sun, you should ensure that this isn’t provided by too many overhanging trees in the garden as ponds need direct sunlight to thrive properly. You should buy a good mixture of native pond plants such as water violets and marsh marigolds which both thrive in ponds. Your local garden centre should be able to give you advice on the types of suitable plants that are available in your area for a wildlife garden. A pond of 2 to 3 feet in depth is also recommended if you want to attract frogs to it.

Food For Frogs In The Garden One of the additional benefits of having frogs in your garden is that they will keep the insects at bay from destroying other things in your wildlife garden. They’ll eat moths, mosquitoes and their larvae, snails, slugs, flies, beetles and cockroaches and by planting lots of different shrubs and plants native to your area and by mulching garden beds and keeping a compost heap, your garden will become a magnet to frogs who have a canny knack of sussing out the best places to colonise.

The Moisture and Humidity That Frogs Need Don’t be surprised if you find frogs have taken up residence in your garden greenhouse if you have one. They are attracted by the humid, moist conditions which also attracts other insects and small creatures on a frog’s menu.

Breeding Frogs In The Garden Pond Garden ponds that are shaded and filled with appropriate pond plants create the perfect breeding ground for frogs.

Hazards and Things to Watch Out For With Frogs

It’s imperative that you create the right garden environment to ‘attract’ frogs into your garden and have patience. If the setting’s right, they will find you. This can sometimes take a couple of years but you should not try to introduce frogs into your wildlife garden by bringing them in from another area. If you remove them from their original habitat, they’ll most likely die or migrate away.

They are also at risk from careless mowing and strimming so it’s important to keep your garden grass short and mow it regularly as a frog might take shelter in longer grass and you might not be able to see it when it comes to mowing. Also, if you use nylon mesh to protect garden plants, make sure it’s kept taut and the mesh size is at least 1.5 inches (4cm) as this mesh can trap and slowly kill frogs if they end up underneath it.

What Frogs Do In In Winter

The majority of male frogs will hibernate in the garden pond in winter and lie dormant near the bottom. Therefore, as they need oxygen to survive, you should ensure that you regularly check the pond during freezing winter temperatures and thaw part of it by placing a pan of hot water on it.

Having frogs in your wildlife garden does not require too much in the way of maintenance but they are relatively fragile creatures so by following the advice here, you can ensure that you create the perfect garden environment in which they can prosper.

Note to Add

Recent studies have shown that the layer of ice that sits on the surface, traps air created by plants and actually benefits the pond, so making a hole may not be as necessary as once thought. We’ll keep you posted on this…