If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re already on board when it comes to being Wild About Gardens and supporting our native wildlife.

While the majority of our bats have their niche habitats in rural landscapes, a few of our common species regularly use urban spaces to forage and roost. This is great news if you want to help bats as everyone can play their part. Admittedly, the bigger your garden the more impact you will have, but even if you don’t have a garden you can make a difference.

Bat-friendly planting

All of our UK species of bats eat insects, so providing food for insects will increase their numbers and provide food for bats. Ornamental plants can be useful for some insects but native trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants will be more beneficial and attract a wider range of invertebrates. The more wildflowers you can incorporate the better.

Other features which will support a plentiful insect supply include ponds, boggy areas, log piles, compost heaps, dead-hedges, and areas of uncut long grass. All are habitats that offer breeding spaces, food, and shelter to a myriad number of different crawling and flying creatures for bats to feast on. A hedge of mixed native trees and shrubs will not only provide many insects with ideal breeding spaces, but also the right environment for bats to forage, giving them food and shelter as they hunt. A pond can also provide drinking water for bats.

How to build a pond

How to make a hedge for wildlife

Problems for bats

There are a few things that it’s important not to do too, like using chemicals.  This includes artificial fertilisers as well as pesticides. Artificial fertilisers are environmentally damaging and polluting, both in their production and use.

Do you have external lighting on your house? Such lighting prevents or causes bats to delay emergence from their roost and cuts down the amount of time they have to forage, so removing or reducing this can be beneficial. Some bat species avoid areas with artificial lighting and this reduces the places they can feed and breaks up feeding corridors.

Sticky insect traps and clothes moth traps can be dangerous for bats as they are attracted to any insects stuck to them and can become trapped themselves. If you have to use one, enclose it in some fine mesh so that the insects can get through but the bats can’t.

Bats and cats

If you have a cat, one of the most important things you can do is to keep it indoors from half an hour before sunset and until half an hour after sunrise – and at the very least, for 90 minutes around those times. This is especially important during the months of June to September when bats are raising young. They can be very chatty at this time and cats can hear them and be attracted to the roost. Once they’ve found a roost, the bats are very vulnerable as cats will often return to hunt time and time again, sitting on roofs, walls, and fences to swat the bats as they emerge. According to the Bat Conservation Trust (BCT) around 30% of bats that are rescued have been caught by cats and of those only 14% will recover to be returned to the wild.

Bat boxes and habitat

Bats also need shelter and somewhere to breed. A bat box is the obvious answer and can be installed in a tree or house-side. BCT have some excellent information on their website that you may find useful to help choose the right site and option for you and your local bats.

For more information about Kent’s bats visit Kent Bat Group and for further information on gardening for bats and other wildlife visit Wild About Gardens.

Read more: 

How to build a bat box

How to attract moths and bats to your garden