If you intend to make your garden reptile-friendly so it will attract lizards and snakes, you don't actually have to do all that much. In the following photo series, I'll show you how to turn a conventional garden in 6 EASY STEPS into a colorful wildflower meadow and oasis for wildlife and insects.
A few years ago, my garden looked like this:
A lawn like the one in the photo above is a disaster for most reptiles. There's nowhere to hide, and lizards in particular have a hard time moving quickly on the grass stubble and thus become easy prey for cats and raptors. But there are also no flowers that would attract insects with their nectar, and a garden without insects - which is what many small vertebrates including lizards and birds mainly feed on - is a dead zone.
Which is why my FIRST STEP was to completely remove the turf at the root. It might not have been necessary to get rid of the whole lawn, but I had previously tried to only partially remove the sod and plant wildflowers to attract swallowtails (which was temporarily quite successful, and you can read all about that here: https://www.lacerta-bilineata.com/post/the-swallowtail-papilio-machaon-how-to-attract-butterflies-to-your-garden ).
Unfortunately though, by the following year the thick grass had already taken over again, and the wildflowers and herbs mostly didn't stand a chance (by the way, in case you want to know which misunderstanding had led to the dreadful "sod desert" in the first place - because my garden didn't always look that way - you should also check out the link above :-).
I chose late February to get rid of the lawn, because I wanted to have enough time to sow wildflowers that would already bloom the same year.
Tip on how to proceed: drive a spade into the sod, but at an angle where it cuts almost horizontally underneath the roots (normally the roots don't go very deep). Then pull on the cut piece of turf and start rolling it up like a carpet, that way you'll make quick progress.
Once the turf had been removed, I loosened the surface of the soil with a rake - this was STEP 2. As a 3RD STEP, I created a few narrow paths by simply walking back and forth a few times on the soft soil while treading it with a bit of force, until the earth had become hard and flat in the desired places. Such paths are helpful if you want to observe and photograph the animals in your garden and thus would like to be able to move without trampling the plants.
But these paths are also helpful because they provide open spaces in your garden where more sunlight is able to enter, which certain plants need, plus snakes and lizards also like to use such pathways to bask in the sun and also to move around more easily.
STEP 4 consisted of dispersing wildflower seeds on the loose soil of the remaining garden areas (you can get a wildflower meadow seed mix at every garden center, just make sure it consists of native species).
Wildflower seeds need no further help to germinate, but of course they will sprout faster if the soil is slightly moist and temperatures are mild. But the one thing you'll need most now is patience, because depending on the weather it may take several months until the plants really grow (in my case it took around two months).
By early May the wildflowers finally started to show a little (the larger visible plants in the photo above - irises, phlox, rosemary, lavender, field scabiouses and ox-eye daisies among others - are not from the wildflower mix but had already been constant residents in my garden before).
STEP 5 consisted of bringing lots of rocks into the garden. I used these to create a natural barrier between my planned wildflower meadow and the existing garden flowers, but I also left piles of them in certain places. Most importantly, I made sure that all these rocks are laid out in such a way that there are lots of cavities under and between them where reptiles (and other small animals) can hide and find shelter.
Rocks that are relatively flat are particularly useful for such “lizard lounges”, because if you place them at an angle to each other you automatically get little hollow spaces underneath them which function like tiny tunnels for snakes and lizards that allow them to move around undetected. But reptiles generally love to bask on rocks, and like the paths, they also create open areas in the garden where no plants grow and more sunlight can enter.
Another 3 weeks have passed; the picture above is from the 23th of May. As you can see, the plants are growing while the paths remain clear. A few days later the first field poppies (which were part of the wildflower mix) would already open their gorgeous red flowers, as you can see in the photos further down below.
In the meantime, as the 6TH - and final - STEP, I had brought several small tree stumps (as well as other dead wood to create log piles and brush piles - more of which later) into the garden that I had collected in the nearby forest. Wood has the advantage over stone that it warms up quickly once it gets a little sunshine, which is why reptiles prefer it for basking during the cooler seasons.
But these wooden stumps (as well as the rock piles) also provide the reptiles in my garden with slightly elevated positions from where they can observe their surroundings. Lizards are very territorial and want to see who enters their "turf", and such elevated spots in the garden often mark the key points of their territory, which they defend against rivals. I have highlighted 4 of these spots in the next photo:
After I had completed the 6 STEPS as described above, several western green lizards moved into my garden over the course of the year, and from August onward, I was delighted to find a large male every day on one of the 4 spots marked in the photo above (see photo gallery below).
It is important to mention, though, that this beautiful lizard species had always been present in the area around my house, but during the period of the "sod desert", I never spotted a single one in my garden, nor did I see any snakes.
The perfect storm of my immediate neighbors getting several cats at a time where there were no hiding places in my garden proved fatal for the reptiles. But once I had completely removed the lawn and created woodpiles and built "lizard lounges" everywhere, it wasn't long before lizards - and snakes - colonized the garden again.
But as I already mentioned: the prerequisite for this success was that there were still reptile populations in the area, which unfortunately in many places just isn't the case. And if there is a high density of free-roaming cats - who constantly prey on lizards - the chances in the long run for a relatively large lizard species like the western greens are slim at best.
This is sadly also true for "my" population, but by transforming my garden in a way that provides ideal conditions for reptiles, I've hopefully improved the odds of their survival.
The numbers of the lizard basking spots in the photos below correspond to the spots I marked in the previous photo.
I also made the lower part of the garden more reptile-friendly with tree stumps, woodpiles and piles of rocks.
Important: Hiding places for reptiles should not be too far apart throughout the garden so that the animals never have to move too far across open areas without protection.
When creating the brush piles, I made sure to put them in places that were reached by either the first rays of sun in the morning or the last ones in the evening.
This approach proved successful; I was soon able to observe snakes and lizards from sunrise until sunset in my garden.
I was able to observe snakes and green lizards all year round in my now reptile-friendly garden, but many other animals - especially insects and birds - also came to visit. All sorts of bumblebees, sweat bees and butterflies and honeybees obviously appreciated the variety of different flowering plants my garden now offered, because my wildflower meadow developed fantastically, as the following photo gallery shows:
If you enjoy nature, I can highly recommend that you do the same as I did and turn your garden into a colorful paradise for wildlife: you won't regret it. As far as I'm concerned, I'm very happy with the result and my camera is busy nearly every day :-)
Comments