Growing Family

UK home and garden blog sharing ideas, inspiration and tips for busy family life, written by Catherine Hughes

  • Home
  • About
    • About Me – Catherine Hughes
    • Contact / PR
    • Disclosure
    • Privacy Policy
  • Garden
    • What to Plant Now
    • Garden Jobs this Month
    • Container Gardening
    • Growing Guides
    • Grow Your Own
    • Gardening with Children
    • Garden Tips
    • Garden Design
    • Houseplants
    • In Season Now
    • Birth Month Flowers
  • Interiors
    • Interior Design Tips
    • Living Room
    • Kitchen & Dining
    • Bedroom
    • Bathroom
    • Family Home
  • Nature
    • Exploring Nature
    • Days Out
    • Travel
  • Craft
    • Nature Craft
    • Kids Craft
    • Crafts for Adults
  • Family Fun
    • Jokes & Puns
    • Inspiring Quotes

Giving nature a home in our garden: making a frog and toad abode

October 16, 2017 by Catherine 13 Comments

Give nature a home in your garden with this easy guide to making a frog and toad habitat - perfect for a family nature activity.

If you read the blog regularly, you’ll know that we’re big fans of getting outdoors and enjoying nature, and also that we’re partnering with RSPB this year to support their ‘Give nature a home in your garden’ campaign.

60% of the UK’s wildlife species have seen a decline over the last fifty years, and the RSPB campaign aims to encourage us all to take small, achievable steps to help nature in our own green spaces.

We’ve had lots of fun this year with some of the RSPB’s nature gardening activities, including sowing wildflower seeds to attract pollinating insects, adding plants that make our garden a haven for butterflies, and growing plants that attract moths to our garden.

This month, we’ve been getting our hands dirty creating a habitat for frogs and toads.

garden toad rspb images eleanor bentall

Credit: rspb-image.com Eleanor Bentall

As well as playing an important role in nature’s food chain, frogs and toads are brilliant garden residents; they eat slugs, snails and insects, helping you keep pests under control naturally.  Frogs and toads are also fascinating creatures; my kids are always so excited when they discover one in the garden.

Frogs and toads hibernate in winter, and will take shelter in a cool, dark, damp place out of the reach of predators.  We can encourage them to over-winter in our gardens by providing the right conditions; this is quite simple to do, and great for the kids to get involved with.

garden frog rspb images eleanor bentall

Credit: rspb-image.com Eleanor Bentall

So how do you make a highly desirable frog and toad winter mansion?  We followed the RSPB Make a Frog and Toad Abode activity sheet, which takes you through the process step-by-step.

The first thing you need to do is choose a suitable spot for your froggy home.  A cool, shady or semi-shady area is perfect; if there’s a pond nearby that’s great, but not essential.

We decided to build our frog and toad abode at our allotment, where there’s the perfect spot.  There’s a patch of land near the shed that’s quiet and shady, and it’s also close to a little pond on our neighbour’s plot.

a shady spot for frogs and toads

Next, we dug a round hole in the ground, about 30-45cm deep with a flat bottom.

making a frog and toad abode to encourage nature in the garden

Once our hole was ready, it was time to go on a hunt to find lots of bricks, stones, sticks and general rubble to fill the hole with.  The kids loved racing around finding treasure; it tidied up our plot a bit too!

making a frog and toad abode to encourage nature in the garden

The next job was to position everything inside the hole, and there’s a bit of an art to this step.  You need to create an underground maze, with lots of ways in and out, and the bricks and rocks must be positioned so that they don’t collapse and crush the inhabitants.  We found that starting with the bigger pieces and wedging corners against the sides worked well.

making a frog and toad abode to encourage nature in the garden

Once we’d created our maze, we put the soil back over the top to create a mound.  Before we did this, we put some flat pieces of slate and brick over the top of the pile, to give it a bit of a roof support.  It’s important to leave some entrances open, so you still need gaps around the edges; an easy way to do this is to just pile the soil over the back half.

making a frog and toad abode to encourage nature in the garden

The final touch was to give the den some camouflage with twigs and sticks.  We sowed wildflower seeds in this area earlier in the year, and we’ll sow them again next spring to provide some additional shelter.

making a frog and toad abode to encourage nature in the garden

Here’s our finished frog and toad abode – what do you think?

making a frog and toad abode to encourage nature in the garden

This was such a great family gardening activity, and really different to anything the kids have done before.  It combines a nature hunt with some good old digging and getting grubby, while also being really beneficial for your local wildlife.  I hope we get lots of residents, we might even see some of them emerging in spring!

There are lots more ideas for family-friendly nature activities on the RSPB website – and you can get a free personalised plan for your own garden. Just put in your postcode and the size of your garden to generate tips on how to help wildlife where you live.

Will you be making a winter residence for frogs and toads?  Whatever you’re doing to give nature a home in your garden, do share your tips in the comments so that we can inspire each other 🙂

You might also like to take a look at my post on how to garden for wildlife, which is full of simple ideas that will make your garden more wildlife-friendly.

Pin this for later:

Give nature a home in your garden with this easy guide to making a frog and toad habitat - perfect for a family nature activity.

Tweet
Share
Share
Pin250
250 Shares

Filed Under: Exploring Nature Tagged With: Activity, Children, Family, Frogs, Garden, gardening, Nature, Outdoors, RSPB, Toads, Wildlife

« 5 easy ways to prepare your home for Christmas guests
Budgeting: top tips for getting it right »

Comments

  1. helloitsgemma says

    October 12, 2016 at 9:02 pm

    oh, I love this. It’s so good to support wildlife. We’ve a tiny urban garden and have a pond but there is just too much concrete around us to attract frogs and toads. Our aim is insects, butterflies and birds and it’s working, slowly but surely.

    Reply
    • Catherine says

      October 13, 2016 at 8:43 am

      It takes time doesn’t it, having made some changes with wildlife in mind we’re seeing a steady increase which will hopefully continue.

      Reply
  2. Jenny Eaves says

    October 16, 2016 at 10:00 pm

    What great work! I love your frog and toad home, it looks fantastic and just what they need for the winter, we might need to give it a go in our garden as we have quite a few frogs and at least one toad around. I really hope you see some toads emerge in spring! Thanks for linking up to #whatevertheweather 🙂 x

    Reply
    • Catherine says

      October 17, 2016 at 8:29 pm

      Well it sounds like your garden is the perfect spot for one of these! The kids are very excited at the prospect of watching sleepy frogs and toads emerge so I suspect we’ll be setting up a regular watch 😉

      Reply
  3. Kelly Robinson says

    October 17, 2016 at 8:59 pm

    What a wonderful activity to do with your little ones, and it helps our wildlife too. Looked like lots of fun and I really do hope you get some over wintering guests using the toad abode. Thank you very much for linking this lovely post with #ChasingNature

    Reply
    • Catherine says

      October 19, 2016 at 8:06 pm

      It was great fun Kelly, we’ve had a really lovely time with all of our RSPB nature gardening activities this year and they’ve really made a difference to how much wildlife comes to visit us.

      Reply
  4. Becky says

    October 18, 2016 at 1:05 pm

    I LOVE this idea!

    Reply
  5. Tamsin Mathias says

    October 19, 2016 at 9:21 am

    I love frogs and toads! This is such a great idea – exactly what they need for winter! #ChasingNature

    Reply
    • Catherine says

      October 19, 2016 at 8:04 pm

      They’re fascinating creatures aren’t they, my kids really love it when they spot one in the garden. Hopefully they’ll be spotting a few more now!

      Reply
  6. Helena says

    October 20, 2016 at 11:02 pm

    What a wonderful idea and an inspirational. #ChasingNature

    Reply
    • Catherine says

      October 23, 2016 at 2:27 pm

      Glad you like it Helena 🙂

      Reply
  7. Silly Little Sheep says

    June 12, 2017 at 7:42 pm

    Hello, I really like the idea. i am a member of RSPB and I just found a little frog in the garden. We built a little pond for it but I want to make sure there are enough places for the frogs to stay over winter. Your frog abode looks very pretty.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. #ChasingNature – Week 3 Round Up | says:
    October 23, 2016 at 7:22 pm

    […] from Nature Mum Blog chose to feature Growing Family’s post, Giving nature a home in our garden: Making a frog and toad abode. Kelly said: “This activity was just wonderful as it is not only great fun for little ones to […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Hi, I’m Catherine. Welcome to Growing Family, a top UK home & garden blog sharing ideas, inspiration and tips for making the most of busy family life, indoors and out.
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Search

ORDER MY BOOKS

Popular Posts

  • 73 inspirational gardening quotes and garden sayings

    73 inspirational gardening quotes and garden sayings

  • Growing sunflowers in pots: easy step-by-step guide

    Growing sunflowers in pots: easy step-by-step guide

  • How to grow garlic: easy step-by-step guide

    How to grow garlic: easy step-by-step guide

  • 20 of the best trailing plants for hanging baskets and pots

    20 of the best trailing plants for hanging baskets and pots

  • Best winter plants for pots: 25 stunning low maintenance plants

    Best winter plants for pots: 25 stunning low maintenance plants

  • The best low maintenance plants for outdoor pots, and how to take care of them

    The best low maintenance plants for outdoor pots, and how to take care of them

VuelioTop10Badge2020

BRAMBLECREST GARDEN FURNITURE

Connect

Catherine Hughes is a home & garden blogger sharing ideas, inspiration & tips for making the most of busy family life, indoors and out.
Learn More

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Categories

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Copyright Growing Family 2023