Common Ground Suffolk, The gardener's guide to frogs and toads

Garden species Common frog & common toad

Spawn season January to April

Pest control Up to 10,000 pests per season

Key habitat Garden pond

68%

The decline in common toad populations across the UK over the 30 years from 1985 to 2013, documented through the Froglife Toads on Roads volunteer patrol dataset. The common toad now meets the IUCN criteria for red-listing by rate of population loss, though it has not yet been formally listed. It is one of Britain’s fastest-declining vertebrates.

Of all the creatures that pass through a garden, frogs and toads are among the most directly useful to a grower. They are entirely carnivorous, entirely harmless, and active precisely when pest pressure is highest. A single toad returning to the same garden year after year will eat its way through thousands of slugs, ants, and beetles each season. Yet both species have declined sharply across Britain in recent decades, largely because the habitats they depend on have disappeared or been made inhospitable. A garden with a pond and a few damp corners is capable of reversing that trend, one small population at a time.

Two species, one garden

The common frog (Rana temporaria) is Britain’s most widespread amphibian, found across almost the whole of the British Isles from coastal gardens to upland moorland. The common toad (Bufo bufo) has a similarly broad distribution but tends to be less numerous in suburban gardens, partly because it favours larger, more established ponds and partly because it is more vulnerable to road mortality during its annual spring migration to breeding sites.

Telling them apart

The two species are easy to confuse at a glance, but several features distinguish them reliably:

Skin: Frogs have smooth, moist skin. Toads have dry, distinctly warty skin.
Movement: Frogs hop, often covering considerable distance in a single bound. Toads walk or crawl with a slow, deliberate gait and rarely leap.
Body shape: Frogs are slimmer with longer, more powerful hind legs. Toads are stockier and broader across the body.
Eyes: Frogs have a circular dark mark behind the eye (the tympanum, or eardrum), visible at close range. Toads have distinctive copper-coloured eyes with a horizontal pupil.
Colour: Frogs vary considerably, from olive green and brown through to yellow, red, or cream, usually with darker stripes on the hind legs and a dark mask around the face. Toads are typically uniform olive brown, dark brown, or grey.

Telling the spawn apart

Frogspawn is laid in loose clumps or rafts that float at the water surface, sometimes in large masses where several females have spawned close together. Toadspawn is laid in long strings of double rows of eggs, wound around submerged vegetation rather than floating free. If you see spawn threading through water plants like a string of beads, it is toad spawn.

Tadpoles can also be distinguished: frog tadpoles start black and develop mottled brown colouring as they grow, and tend to spread out individually across the pond. Toad tadpoles remain black throughout their development and often form tight, moving shoals.

What they eat

Both species are entirely carnivorous as adults, feeding on any invertebrate they can catch and swallow. A single frog or toad can consume over 100 invertebrates in a single night, and up to 10,000 pests over a full growing season.

Their preferences differ in complementary ways. Frogs tend to favour slugs and snails, making them particularly valuable in a vegetable plot. Toads favour ants, beetles, and woodlice, and forage widely across the ground at night. Both eat caterpillars, cutworms, and other soil-dwelling larvae. Neither will damage plants or disturb soil.

Juveniles, during the weeks immediately after leaving the pond in summer, feed on tiny invertebrates including springtails and small flies. This phase is important for understanding why undisturbed soil surface and leaf litter matter: these microhabitats are where young frogs and toads build the reserves they need to survive their first winter.

Life in the pond

Breeding season

Both species return to ponds to breed in late winter and early spring. Common frogs typically arrive first, from late January through to March, with exact timing depending on water temperature. Common toads follow slightly later, generally from late February through to April. Both species show strong site fidelity, returning to the same pond to breed year after year, often following routes through gardens and across roads that they have used throughout their lives.

Male frogs produce a low, purring croak to attract females; the sound of a pond full of frogs on a mild February evening is one of the earliest signs of spring. Toads do not call. Males congregate at the pond and attempt to clasp any passing toad, sometimes forming large, chaotic groups around a single female. Females are larger than males in both species.

From egg to froglet

Eggs hatch within two to three weeks of being laid, depending on water temperature. The tadpoles that emerge are initially aquatic and feed on algae and decaying plant material, becoming increasingly carnivorous as they develop. Metamorphosis takes around 14 weeks under typical conditions, though tadpoles can accelerate their development if the pond is drying out or delay it in cold conditions.

Froglets and toadlets leave the pond during June and July, dispersing into surrounding habitat. They are tiny at this stage, sometimes barely a centimetre long. They spend the rest of summer and autumn feeding intensively. Sexual maturity is reached at two to three years, with full adult size taking up to four years.

The rest of the year

For most of the year, both species live on land rather than in water. They favour cool, damp conditions and are most active after dark or following rain. During the day they shelter under logs, dense vegetation, or stones, emerging at night to forage.

In autumn, both species move towards their hibernation sites. Frogs often hibernate in the mud at the bottom of a pond, absorbing oxygen from the water through their skin; they also hibernate under log piles, in compost heaps, or in deep leaf litter. Toads are more likely to hibernate on land, burrowing into loose soil or sheltering beneath large stones and root systems. Hibernation typically runs from October or November through to late January or February, when rising temperatures trigger the return journey to the breeding pond.

Who else might move in

A garden pond that attracts frogs and toads will often attract newts too. The smooth newt (Lissotriton vulgaris) is the species most likely to colonise a garden pond. It is the UK’s most widespread newt and breeds in ponds from March to June. Males develop a wavy crest along the back and tail during the breeding season and have a spotted, orange underside; females are plainer, olive or grey-brown. Like frogs and toads, smooth newts spend most of the year on land, returning to water only to breed.

The great crested newt (Triturus cristatus) occasionally uses garden ponds but generally favours larger, deeper water bodies set within rough grassland and scrub. It is almost black with a warty skin and a striking orange-red spotted underside; breeding males develop a dramatic jagged crest. It is strictly protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, making it illegal to kill, injure, capture, or disturb one, or to damage its habitat. If you think great crested newts may be using your garden, contact Natural England or a licensed ecological consultant before making any changes to the pond or its surroundings.

Why numbers are falling

The toad crisis

The common toad has declined by 68% across the UK over the 30 years from 1985 to 2013, and populations have continued to fall since. The declines have been most severe in South-East England. In East Anglia, earlier sharp falls were followed by some partial recovery from around 2005 onwards, though not enough to reverse the overall trend.

Road mortality is one of the most significant drivers. Toads return to their natal pond each spring along routes that predate the roads built across them by centuries. An estimated 20 tonnes of toads are killed on UK roads every year during the spring migration. In 2025, Froglife’s network of 280 volunteer Toad Patrol groups helped 156,227 toads cross roads safely, yet those same patrols recorded 17,251 toads killed even at manned crossing points. More than two million toads have been moved across UK roads by Toad Patrollers since records began in 1974.

Pond loss

Both frogs and toads depend on ponds for reproduction, and the UK has lost the great majority of its natural ponds over the past century through drainage, infilling, and agricultural intensification. The ponds that remain are often isolated from one another, making recolonisation of areas where populations have died out increasingly difficult.

Ranavirus

Ranavirus is a serious disease of amphibians that can kill more than 90% of a frog population in a single outbreak, with die-offs often recurring at the same pond in subsequent years. Affected frogs develop haemorrhagic sores on the skin and die rapidly; large numbers of dead frogs appearing suddenly in or near a pond are the clearest indicator.

Ranavirus spreads readily when spawn, tadpoles, or aquatic plants are moved from one pond to another. The most important preventive action is to never transfer spawn or living material between water bodies, and to let amphibians find and colonise a new pond in their own time. Fish introduced to garden ponds can also carry the virus. If you find dead or dying frogs, report it to the Garden Wildlife Health project at gardenwildlifehealth.org, which monitors disease outbreaks across the UK.

Garden hazards

Frogs and toads face additional pressures in managed gardens. Pesticides and slug pellets kill the invertebrates they depend on and are absorbed directly through their permeable skin, which makes them highly sensitive to any chemical reaching the ground or pond. Garden netting used for fruit cages or vegetable protection traps amphibians that become entangled and cannot free themselves. Lawnmowers and strimmers kill frogs resting in long grass; always check an area before cutting. Cats account for significant mortality, particularly among juveniles dispersing from ponds in summer.

Frogs and toads in Suffolk

Both the common frog and common toad are widespread throughout Suffolk, though as elsewhere in lowland England their numbers have declined over recent decades. The county’s mix of farmland, river valleys, and garden habitats supports both species across most of its area.

Suffolk sits within the East Anglian region which, according to long-term Toad Patrol data, experienced severe toad declines in earlier decades followed by some partial recovery since around 2005. The Brecks and the Waveney Valley are among the richer areas for amphibians in the county. The Brecks, straddling the Suffolk-Norfolk border, are notable for hosting the UK’s rarest native amphibian: the pool frog (Pelophylax lessonae), which was reintroduced to Thompson Common in Norfolk in 2015 after its extinction from Britain.

The edible frog (Pelophylax kl. esculentus), a naturalised hybrid that was introduced to parts of England in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is also present in East Anglia. It resembles the common frog but is larger and typically calls with a loud, repetitive croak from open water in summer. Its status in Suffolk is localised.

Suffolk’s many traditional farm ponds, once a defining feature of the agricultural landscape, have been lost in large numbers over the past century to drainage and infilling. The garden ponds across the county now play a genuinely significant role in maintaining local amphibian populations.

Creating the right habitat

The pond

A garden pond is the single most effective thing you can do for frogs and toads. Even a small sunken container can support breeding populations. Larger ponds with varied depth and generous planting support more stable and diverse communities.

Aim for a depth of 20 to 60 centimetres across most of the pond, with at least one gently sloping side so that frogs and toads can enter and leave the water easily without assistance. A steep-sided pond, or one surrounded by vertical brickwork, is a trap for amphibians and hedgehogs alike. Include emergent and submerged planting to provide shade, resting spots at the waterline, and cover for tadpoles. Native species are preferable.

Do not add fish. Even small fish eat frog eggs, tadpoles, and newt larvae, and a pond with an established fish population will rarely support a successful amphibian breeding colony. Do not transfer spawn or plants from other ponds to speed up colonisation; allow frogs and toads to find the pond naturally. Local populations are usually not far away, and most new ponds in areas with existing amphibians receive their first spawn within one to three seasons.

On land

The area around the pond, and the wider garden, matters as much as the water itself. Frogs and toads spend the majority of their lives on land and need damp, sheltered conditions to forage, rest, and hibernate. Log piles, stone piles, and areas of dense low vegetation all provide suitable cover. A compost heap offers both warmth and a concentration of invertebrate prey, and many frogs and toads overwinter in them.

Leave areas of long grass or rough ground, particularly around the pond margins, where small amphibians can disperse and shelter after leaving the water. Autumn leaf litter near the pond should be left undisturbed; the leaves provide both hibernation cover and the invertebrate communities that newly metamorphosed froglets and toadlets depend on.

What to avoid

Slug pellets, pesticides, and synthetic garden chemicals of any kind. Frogs absorb toxins directly through their skin and are killed by chemicals reaching the ground or pond water.
Fish in wildlife ponds. Goldfish and other ornamental fish consume eggs, tadpoles, and newt larvae and will prevent successful breeding.
Moving spawn, tadpoles, or aquatic plants between ponds. This is the primary route of Ranavirus transmission.
Fine mesh netting at ground level. Fruit cage and vegetable bed netting should be pegged firmly down or raised clear of the ground; frogs and toads become fatally entangled in loose netting.
Strimming or mowing without checking the area first. Frogs rest in long grass and under low vegetation during the day and are easily injured or killed by blades.
Disturbing pond margins in spring. Leave the area undisturbed from January through to late April to avoid disrupting spawning adults or newly laid spawn.

The Gardener’s Guide to Frogs and Toads