There are roughly 2.7 million grey squirrels in Britain, a significant increase in the past few years — and in the autumn it can feel like way too many of them are in our gardens. It’s like a cruel game: you plant a bulb, they steal a bulb. It’s grand theft garden-style and it’s absolutely infuriating.
The grey squirrel is an American import and, as an American, I can only apologise, but it is possible that it has met its match in the form of the formidable plantswoman and writer Sarah Raven, who runs her business from her Perch Hill cutting garden in East Sussex. She is a tulipophile and she and her team pot up hundreds of bulbs (if not more) every year.
Two years ago she planted up a load of willow baskets only to discover the next morning that the squirrels had taken every iris and tulip out of the bulb lasagne. “Infuriated,” she writes in a post for the Garden Collective website (renamed recently from Scribehound Gardening), “we started a trial of every known method of protecting bulbs from squirrels.”
Tulip bulbs are a favourite of squirrels
ALAMY
Her results are now in and, just in time for all of us to save our tulip bulbs, here they are.
• Chicken wire over the top of pots: this was deemed a pain to secure and maintain. Plus, it isn’t exactly attractive. (I’ve seen a few people tempted by topping their pots with gravel — it does look nice, but sadly the squirrels are determined enough to dig away regardless.)
• Chicken wire buried in the pot: this worked but it is time consuming if you have a lot of pots and it must be removed before flowering as it will damage tulips.
• Bulbs dampened and rolled in chilli powder: this worked in some crocus and species tulip pots but not all — lost bulbs in borders and larger pots.
• A dense layer of chilli flakes on the ground: this was 60 per cent effective but expensive and needs to be reapplied after heavy rain.
I have tried all of these in the past (though in a less organised manner) and found them lacking, but the good news is that Raven found two options that actually worked (and that I had not tried).
• Topping pots with thorny prunings: create prickly noughts and crosses across the top immediately after planting. Rose prunings, the thornier the better, are ideal but you can also use eryngiums, holly or even brambles. Remove as tulips appear.
• Planting over the top of the bulb layer: use hardy annuals or biennials, both ornamental and edibles. Raven’s successes included wallflowers, honesty, violas, pansies, kale and hardy salad leaves.
The best option of all may be the second one as you don’t have to look at a bare pot all winter and, in the case of edibles, it gives you (and not the squirrel) something to eat.
• It’s time to declutter the garden
Don’t forget to plant your sweet peas now
It is the time when gardeners have started to dream of the year to come. I have decided that next year is going to be my best ever for sweet peas. This year the sweet pea trellis was distinctly underwhelming but all that is going to change. Usually, I plant in the early spring but I am sowing some sweet peas now in small pots and leaving them out over winter in a sheltered position. It’s all about getting an early start. Next year the trellis will be full of sweet peas. Of course it will.
Gardeners’ question time
I am enjoying readers’ questions, so please do keep them coming. This one, from Jo Swinburne, who lives next to a park flanked with plane trees, seemed very timely.
Q. I always collect some leaves to store and make leaf mould with, but tend to collect them off the border. I’ve found in the past, though, that they seem to attract small slugs, which shelter under them. What’s your view on this and what would you use for a mulch?
A. The fashionable advice this year is to leave them on the border, where they will get pulled down by worms. But I’ve always left them because I am, well, if not lazy then certainly willing to take the easy way out. You are right that they attract small slugs, but this is not all that bad as they are great at breaking down dead matter, which is good for the soil.
In general, it’s a losing game trying to outsmart slugs and, don’t forget, the leaves will also attract slug predators including frogs, toads, beetles and hedgehogs. This is a very good thing: you need all the help you can get in that particular battle. I mulch with peat-free compost as well as some of the thousands of leaves from my wisteria. Leaves are also free.
• Should you sweep up leaves? Gardeners say no — here’s why
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