Wildlife That Controls Pests For You: A UK Garden Guide

The most effective pest control in a UK garden isn't a product — it's a hedgehog, a frog, or a ladybird larva that's already eating exactly what's bothering your plants. The catch is that most of what makes a garden tidy also makes it useless to them. A few deliberate gaps go a long way.

Hedgehogs eat slugs — if they can get in

A single hedgehog can get through a genuinely useful number of slugs, snails and other invertebrates in a night, but only if it can actually reach your garden. Solid fencing is the main thing stopping them.

• Cut or ask for a 13cm (5 inch) gap at the base of fences and gates — a "hedgehog highway" — so they can range across several gardens in a night, which is how much ground they actually need.
• Leave a wild corner: a pile of logs, leaves or brushwood gives them somewhere to nest and hibernate. Tidy gardens with nowhere to shelter get visited, not lived in.
• Never use slug pellets containing metaldehyde (largely restricted in the UK now, but older stock still turns up) — a hedgehog eating poisoned slugs is being poisoned itself, one level up the food chain.
• Check before strimming long grass, and check bonfire piles before lighting them — both are common hedgehog hiding spots.

Frogs and toads eat slugs too — and need water to breed

Frogs and toads take a similar diet to hedgehogs but hunt from a different angle, and having both in a garden covers more ground than either alone. The one thing they need that a hedgehog doesn't is water to breed in — see the wildlife pond guide for how to provide it.

• Shelter near the pond matters as much as the pond itself: log piles, dense planting or a rockery within a few metres gives them somewhere to shelter between visits to water.
• A pond doesn't need to be big. Even a half-barrel with a sloped exit will bring frogs in — see our wildlife pond guide for how to build one safely.

Ladybirds and lacewings eat aphids

Both adults and — more importantly — their larvae eat aphids in serious numbers; a single ladybird larva can get through dozens a day. They're drawn in by:

• Flat, open flowers (yarrow, fennel, dill, cow parsley types) that lacewings and hoverflies can land on easily — many aphid predators feed on pollen and nectar as adults, even though their larvae are carnivorous.
• Somewhere to overwinter: a "bug hotel," hollow plant stems left uncut over winter, or a loosely stacked log pile all work. Cutting every stem back to the ground in autumn removes exactly what they were about to shelter in.
• No broad-spectrum insecticide. It kills the aphids' predators as readily as the aphids, and the aphids generally recover faster.

What to stop doing, not just what to start

Most of this is subtraction rather than addition:

• Stop using slug pellets and broad-spectrum insecticides — they remove the predators along with the pest, and the pest usually rebounds faster.
• Leave some leaf litter and dead stems over winter rather than clearing every bed to bare soil.
• Leave a gap in the fence rather than sealing the garden off completely.

Quick reference

• Hedgehogs: 13cm fence gap, log/leaf pile, no slug pellets
• Frogs/toads: water to breed in, shelter nearby
• Ladybirds/lacewings: flat open flowers, undisturbed stems over winter
• Above all: stop anything broad-spectrum — it removes the predators, not just the pest

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