Act for bats! - Kitchen Garden Magazine

While bats can be found in both rural and urban settings, most of us are unaware of them and why they need our help to survive.

The Wildlife Trusts, the Bat Conservation Trust and the RHS have joined forces to launch a competition to identify the best insect-friendly plant display in the country – for the benefit of bats.

The ‘Plant a Bat Feast!’ competition, which runs until November 6, heralds the start of a campaign to improve the fortunes of the UK’s bats. Bats need insects, so gardeners are being urged to consider them when making planting choices. The competition is easy to enter: simply choose a range of insect-friendly plants, watch them grow and submit a photo!

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While bats can be found in both rural and urban settings, most of us are unaware of them and why they need our help to survive. A new free downloadable booklet, ‘Stars of the Night’, offers advice on bat-friendly gardening, including:

Ideas for laying on a bat banquet in your garden, balcony or window-box
Details of which bats are most likely to visit your garden and how to listen for them
A seasonal guide to what bats are doing throughout the year
Advice on reducing outdoor lighting (floodlit gardens are detrimental to bats)

Go to http://www.wildaboutgardensweek.org.uk/home/get-creative-for-bats to enter the photo competition, and download the bat gardening booklet at http://www.wildaboutgardensweek.org.uk/Downloads/wag-stars-of-the-night.pdf

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Steve Ott

Steve Ott is editor of Kitchen Garden magazine and started his career as a professional grower, producing everything from cut flowers to vegetables. He has been growing fruit and veg all his life and spends most of his spare time in his garden in the East Midlands. He loves to experiment with crops and varieties he has never grown before and when he isn’t gardening is to be found out in the countryside bird watching and walking his dog Ted.