"Lyn Rennick" wrote in message
om...
Hi,

I live in London but recently I have been getting a lot of squirrels
in my garden. They are very cute and I love to watch them, but I've
now found that they are ruining my garden!

I recently built a raised bed as a memorial to a friend who died in
July and planted some plants in his memory, plants with names which
meant something to us but the squirrels have destroyed a lot of the
plants, especially a climbing rose called Schoolgirl. They keep
digging up the plants, and the ones they don't dig up they seem to
have sucked all the life out of them..leaving leaves dry and withered
with a lot of evenly sized holes in them.(Sempervivums..I guess they
like the fleshy leaves.) I've not seen anything like it before.

Does anyone know how I can stop the squirrels from getting into the
bed? Is there anything I can put down, which will not harm them? Is
there something they don't like which will deter them? I don't want to
use netting of any kind so as to spoil the look of the bed.

Thanks for your anticipated replies.

Lyn

Hi Lyn,

You could spread out a fabric membrane on the bed, cutting holes for the
plants, then cover with a mulch of largish (conker size) pebbles, or slate?
Obviously you could apply the pebbles without the membrane, but after a
while they get 'absorbed' into the soil below. If you don't want to do this
across the whole bed, placing pebbles around the base of the plant should
stop the squirrels from digging there.

HTH

Nick
http://www.ukgardening.co.uk