Gardening with bats in mind
October 24, 2016
To celebrate International Bat Night on 24 August, we’ve put together some top tips on making your garden more bat friendly.
Autumn is mating season for bats so they’re still active and flying during September through to November, feeding themselves up on night-flying insects to get ready for hibernation.
Anything that you can do to encourage these insects into your garden will also help bats. Plants which produce evening nectar and pale night scented flowers such as evening primrose or native honeysuckle are good choices to encourage nocturnal insects such as moths.
Midges may make humans scratch but to a bat they can be a tasty treat so ponds and damp areas that they love are also great for bats. And if you have trees in the garden you could even put up a bat box for them to roost in.
Check out the Wild About Gardens Week website for a mine of helpful information for supporting bats and other wildlife in your local area. And, as the days get shorter and the nights draw in, you could combine an evening of stargazing with some bat watching.
You can use the Bat Conservation Trust’s ‘Big Bat Map’ to find where bats have been spotted recently and record your own sightings too.