01. Intro
Kent Reptile and Amphibian Group (KRAG) has been delighted to join forces with Kent Wildlife Trust (KWT) to promote wildlife friendly gardening. As part of KWT’s wildlife gardening award scheme KRAG introduced a new “Dragons in Your Garden” award in 2010 for the most reptile and amphibian friendly garden.
Find out more about Wild About Gardens and how to enter the competition.
02. What can you do to help?
You can help by creating the kinds of features that will benefit reptiles and amphibians in your garden. Amphibians need damp areas and fish free ponds to breed in. Reptiles need basking areas and places that will keep them warm. Both need places that are safe to hibernate in and a good supply of invertebrate prey. You can help provide these features by building a pond, having an undisturbed compost heap, a south facing rockery with vegetation cover, a vegetation “mosaic” that gives a range of temperatures and cover, basking features such as logs, tiles, felt or tin, areas to shelter and hibernacula to help animals escape the frost and snow in the winter.
Features to be avoided are netting over ponds, cats and slug pellets all of which are reptile and amphibian killers!).
The Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust has produced a booklet called “Dragons in Your Garden”
Also there is a great step by step guide to building your own wildlife friendly pond produced by Foglife called Just Add Water