Encouraging lizards to your garden

Encouraging lizards to your garden

New Zealand has nearly 60 species of lizard that fall into two types – skinks and geckos. Skinks have smooth, shiny skin, often brownish in colour. They look like snakes with legs. Geckos have velvety, baggy-looking skin and broad heads. They are usually green, yellow or grey. Both eat insects, spiders and flies and geckos also drink nectar. In addition, skinks and geckos love small fleshy fruits and help to spread the seeds of some native plants:    

• to attract skinks and geckos into your garden, you’ll need to provide them safe hiding places under rocks and logs
• plant dense, wiry groundcover, vines and climbers
• mulch with chunky-grade bark and encourage leaf lifter to build under trees where you don’t mow
• make rock piles where lizards can bask in the sun but hide in the crevices if danger threatens. Old scoria dry-stone walls are great places for skinks!
• plant native groundcover shrubs with juicy berries like Coprosma and Muehlenbeckia and nectar-bearing flax and pohutukawa.

Pets as predators! While you may be encouraging lizards into your garden, you need to make your garden a safe place for the lizards you invite in:

• have your cat neutered or spayed so they can’t produce unwanted kittens
• keep your cat well fed and have moving toys for it to play with, so it is less inclined to chase lizards
• keep your cat indoors overnight so nocturnal insects and lizards have free reign of your garden
• put a bell on your cat’s collar.

Did you know?

• Lizards help scatter the seeds of some of our native plants and may also pollinate their flowers.
• Lizards will love your backyard if they have food and shelter.

1)  Prepare your garden before making homes for lizards

Untidy gardens are great for lizards. They need places to hide and cover when hunting, feeding and resting, they also need shelter when it’s really hot or really cold. Lizards like to squeeze into body sized holes no more than 5-19 mm wide. They like plenty of holes because many lizards are territorial so they need their own space. They like their homes to stay in one place too. If it’s disturbed, they’ll move out and they might not have anywhere else to go. Lizards need escape sites and they don’t really mind what they’re made of. Any old non-toxic building like old roofing iron can become a good home for lizards. Plants can grow around or over them so they can look quite tidy. Look around your backyard and find a warm, dry, sunny place. The most important thing for lizards is cover. You can use rock or wood piles to create some cover.

2) Use rock piles to create cover for lizards

Use old concrete, bricks and stones and stack them loosely so there are plenty of cracks and holes. Spiders, slaters and beetles will head inside, especially when it’s cold. That’s good news for the lizards that feed on them. Smear yoghurt on some stones and lichens might grow.  If your rock pile turns into a rockery, plant native groundcovers between the rocks.

3) Use wood piles to create cover for lizards

A good pile of dead wood is an adventure playground for lizards. Pile up a few logs and bits of wood and leave them to slowly rot, undisturbed. Let the fungi grow! It takes hold and helps recycle rotting wood by breaking it down. It makes good food for slugs and snails which in turn attracts birds.

4) Grow plants in your backyard that will attract lizards

Plant thickly is the rule. Lizards need safe habitats to run to when cats are on the prowl. That means thick ground-cover, vines and dense plant growth on banks. Berry or nectar producing plant species are good, especially native divaricating shrubs, and if you have a range of plants the lizards will have plenty to eat, all year round. Coprosma species and kawakawa provide fruit and flax, while manuka and rata give nectar. Ferns, tussock grasses and renga renga provide thick ground cover and attract insects for the lizards to eat. Plants like speargrass and the shrubby tororaro offer protection from predators.  Vines like New Zealand clematis and climbing rata connect habitats, and cabbage trees form in clumps for good cover. A local nursery should have a range of plants native to your area and if you grow organically or limit the sprays you use, your lizards will do very well indeed.

5) Wait patiently

Make a lizard friendly backyard and wait patiently. If your lizards have already gone, it may be a little while before they return.

Every lizard in New Zealand is absolutely protected – you can’t take them from the wild, and permits are needed to keep them.