Lizards: the garden's built-in snail patrol

Skinks and blue-tongue lizards are the garden's snail patrol. That blue-tongue basking on your path is quietly working through the slugs and snails that would otherwise mow down your seedlings — reason enough to roll out the welcome mat.

What they eat

Little garden skinks hoover up insects, spiders, caterpillars and slaters; blue-tongues have a real taste for snails and slugs, crunching straight through the shells.

How to welcome them

• Give them shelter and basking spots — a few rocks or logs, a pile of leaf litter, some dense low plants.
• Leave out a shallow dish of water.
• Keep the sprays off (their food is insects), keep cats in, and watch for slow-moving blue-tongues around mowers and dogs.

Skinks and blue-tongues are protected native wildlife — a welcome, hard-working part of a healthy garden. For the full approach, see our guide to managing pests the safe way.

Image: Andrew Harvey, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.