How to Attract Snakes

Snakes can be your best friend if you are maintaining a garden, in spite of their unfavorable image of creating fear. Snakes would gladly take care of any insect or rodent pest issues at no cost! Due to their penchant for slugs, many gardeners believe garter snakes to be particularly helpful.

Use Organic Gardening Products

Chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides may all hurt or even kill snakes, as well as their main source of food, insects. Because most pest species reproduce more quickly than their predators, if you are switching from conventional gardening to organic gardening, you should be aware that you may likely lose more plants to insect pests at first.

Provide or Create Small Hiding Places

Snakes like hiding from predators in chilly, gloomy environments. The simplest method to achieve this is to maintain a little "messy" garden. Snakes love to hide out among brush heaps, fallen logs, and carelessly packed rock piles. Taller plants, particularly grasses, can function well as concealing places.

Place water Around the Garden 

A modest bowl of water placed on the ground is sufficient for the majority of snakes. As long as there is at least one shallow border and/or logs or rocks that may be utilized to securely access the water, snakes will also enjoy garden ponds. Place debris, such as used tires, cans, and satellite dishes, that collects water. Since it becomes quite hot during summer, snakes often need to drink a lot of water. 

Create Warm Locations

Snakes are cold-blooded reptiles, thus they like sunbathing on warm days. Without mortar, dry-stacked rock heaps are excellent because they provide both shaded nooks and concealing areas. Snakes also like relaxing amid mounds of rotting grass clippings, wood chips, and other organic material that has been left out in the sun and beneath black plastic sheets intended to smother weeds.

Ponds, Grass, and Log Stacks

With a little forethought, your garden can become eco-friendly by giving more food and shelter to reptiles and making up for the habitats that have been lost around, all while offering some of the most satisfying wildlife interactions. Numerous strategies for attracting snakes to your yard will also make it a paradise for these reptiles. 

Leaving some of your garden to develop can provide shelter and habitat for amphibians and slugs, two common prey for snakes. However, make sure to provide them with places to sunbathe as snakes make use of hiding under grass for this purpose.

Don't Trim the Shrubs or Cut the Grass

Make the whole yard into a lush, jungle-like environment. Excessive vegetation shields snakes from predators including hawks, owls, dogs, cats, possums, honey badgers, and velociraptors. Rats, mice, voles, and other rodents that are popular prey for many snakes may also find shelter in it. More snakes will show up in your yard when more rats are around.

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