Badgers are Britain's largest remaining land carnivore, and plenty of them live close to people — in the hedge at the end of the road, in the railway embankment, in the wood behind the estate. Most garden visits happen after midnight and leave little behind but a scatter of shallow holes in the lawn. You don't need to coax a badger in. You just need to stop the garden doing them harm, and leave a few things in place that a badger will actually use.

Work out what's already there

Before you change anything, spend a week or two reading the signs. Badgers are creatures of habit, and once you know what you're looking at, their visits are easy to spot.

  • Snuffle holes. Shallow conical pits in lawns and rough grass, usually in clusters, where a badger has pushed its snout into the soil after worms and beetle grubs. One hole could be a squirrel; twenty in a rough line is badger work.
  • Latrines. Small scraped pits, often at a territory edge or along a regular route, holding dark, sometimes slimy droppings. These get used again and again.
  • Runs. Narrow, well-worn tracks — roughly 30cm wide — pushing under a fence, through a hedge bottom or along a wall.
  • Hairs. Coarse black-and-white hairs snagged on wire, a fence board or a barbed strand.
  • Large holes with spoil outside. If a big entrance has a broad mound of fresh soil in front of it and a clear path leading in, stop. That may be a sett.
Badgers and their setts are protected by law. In England, Wales and Scotland, the Protection of Badgers Act 1992 makes it an offence to kill, injure or take a badger, or to damage, destroy or obstruct a sett. If you think there's a sett in your garden, leave it alone and take advice from your local badger group or the relevant statutory agency.

Make the boundaries passable

Fencing is where most trouble starts. Block a badger's habitual route and it will dig underneath, force the panel or find another way — sometimes out onto a road. If you already have a run crossing your boundary, keep it open. A gap of roughly 30cm wide and 20cm high is ample; simply lifting the bottom edge of a panel by 12–15cm will do the same job. Remember to leave space under gates, too.

Think about where the gap leads. A route that funnels straight onto a road or into a neighbour's garden is worse than no gap at all — if that's your layout, ask your local badger group about a safer arrangement. Native hedging is better than fencing wherever you can manage it: it gives cover, allows movement and needs less maintenance than panels and posts. And never block an existing run with a gravel board, a new kerb or a pile of rubble.

Leave water where they can reach it

Badgers drink more than people expect, particularly in dry spells. A shallow dish — no more than 4–5cm deep, at ground level near a hedge or border — will be used most nights in summer. Deep buckets are awkward for a short-legged animal and a drowning risk for hedgehogs and birds.

If you have a pond, badgers can swim but can't climb a vertical liner. Build in a gently sloping beach, or lay a ramp of rough stones or a wide plank into the water. Fit lids to water butts and troughs, or leave a length of timber angled inside as an escape route. Position drinking water near cover and away from roads; badgers are wary, and a dish in the middle of a brightly lit lawn will go untouched.

Feed the soil, not the badger

The bulk of a badger's diet is earthworms, topped up with beetles, grubs, fruit and nuts. The best thing you can do is keep the soil alive and stop it being paved over.

  • Keep some lawn. Badgers hunt worms on short, damp turf, often the morning after rain.
  • Leave one rough strip at the back of a border — long grass and leaf litter, uncut until late winter.
  • Add a log pile or a few dead branches under a shrub. Beetles and grubs breed in damp wood.
  • Plant native fruiting species: hawthorn, blackberry, elder, hazel, wild cherry, rowan. Windfall apples and pears are taken readily, so leave some on the ground.
  • Cut back on chemicals, especially lawn treatments that kill worms. You're removing the food supply.

Cover compost heaps or use a tumbler. Open heaps attract rats, and where there are rats there are often badgers — which brings us to the next section.

Take out the hazards

  1. Slug pellets and pesticides. Metaldehyde slug pellets are no longer permitted for outdoor use in Great Britain, and there's no reason to keep old ones in the shed. Use barriers, nematode treatments or an evening patrol with a torch instead, and never leave bait where a badger, hedgehog or dog can reach it.
  2. Rodenticides. Rat and mouse poison can kill a badger directly, or through a poisoned rodent. If you have an infestation, use traps inside tamper-proof boxes or call in a professional.
  3. Netting and wire. Fruit netting, pea netting and loose wire ends all tangle wildlife. Use rigid mesh, keep it taut and pegged down, or lift it clear of the ground at night. Cut loops in twine and plastic rings before binning them.
  4. Bonfires. Fork the pile over, or rebuild it on the day you burn it. Badgers, hedgehogs and slow worms all use old heaps.
  5. Steep-sided water. Any container deeper than a few centimetres needs an escape route.
  6. Barbed wire and sharp edges. Badgers squeeze under fences and cut themselves. Replace barbed strands near a run with plain wire.
  7. Light and noise. Floodlights that fire every few minutes interrupt feeding and keep badgers away. Angle them down, lower the sensitivity, or use a warm, low-wattage bulb on a timer.

Feeding, pets and hygiene

Please don't feed badgers deliberately. Handouts encourage them to cross roads, draw them into places where disease spreads, and wear away the wariness that keeps them alive. They also attract rats. If a neighbour is already feeding them, don't add to it. Keep bird food off the ground — a ground feeder tray is a badger magnet — never put out milk, which most adult mammals, badgers included, struggle to digest, and avoid salted or mouldy peanuts, which can be toxic.

Dogs and badgers don't mix. Keep dogs away from setts and out of the garden at dusk if badgers are regular visitors; a cornered badger will defend itself, and both animals can be badly injured. A dog digging at a sett is also a legal matter for its owner.

Around latrines, wear gloves, wash your hands afterwards, and keep children from playing there or dogs from rolling in it. Badgers can carry bovine TB, so if you keep livestock, or you're concerned about infection on your land, take advice from your vet or the relevant rural affairs body rather than trying to manage it yourself.

Start with one weekend's work

If you only do a handful of things, do these: leave or cut a gap in the fence where a run already crosses your boundary, put out a shallow dish of water near cover, leave one rough corner unmown, take up any netting that touches the ground, and clear out old slug pellets and poison. Then leave the badgers to it.

Watching comes later. Sit quietly downwind at dusk, keep the torch off or fit a red filter, and resist the urge to follow them. A garden that is safe, damp and slightly untidy at the edges will do far more for badgers than any amount of encouragement.

Photo: Jakub Zerdzicki / Pexels