Common Frog
A familiar garden visitor and highly effective pest controller. Frogs eat slugs, snails, flies, beetles, and worms - consuming large numbers each night throughout the season.
Why you want them
Frogs are one of the most effective natural slug and snail predators in the garden. A single frog can eat thousands of invertebrates per year. They are most active at night, hunting the same prey that causes the most damage to seedlings and leafy crops. A garden pond dramatically increases frog populations - even a small pond can support breeding frogs whose adults then spread throughout the garden. Frogs also respond quickly to prey availability, naturally increasing their foraging where pest pressure is highest.
Helps control
How to attract them
- Garden pond with shallow edges
- Dense ground cover for daytime shelter
- Compost heap
- Leaf piles
- Log piles
Preferred habitat
Damp, sheltered areas close to water. Frogs need a pond for breeding but spend most of the year on land, sheltering under vegetation, in compost heaps, and in dense ground cover. They return to the same pond annually.
What harms them
Loss of breeding ponds, chemical use in the garden and surrounding area, garden netting that traps them, cats and other predators, and loss of damp ground cover.
Related pest guides
Garden, by Willowbottom works with nature, not against it. Support your garden allies and they will do most of the hard work for you.