16/05/2026
It's with a heavy heart I'm having to write a post like this. I'm a wildlife gardener, I do not and will not ever condone the use of herbicides or insecticides in the garden. Over the next few months I will speak about their impacts individually but to start with let's talk about slug pellets. The blue confetti which is generously poured onto and around plants like custard on an apple crumble.
Firstly metaldehyde was banned in 2022 (the original poison in pellets - that's right poison, that you are happily throwing around your garden). Now I've witnessed some of the containers still being used on gardens and sadly people must have been stock piling this, as some still contains metaldehyde. It is deadly. To wildlife and pets and quite frankly not too great for humans. I work as an RVN as well as a gardener and have seen the effects of this on hedgehogs, birds and companion animals. Slugs eat the pellets and in turn die (an horrific death may I add) and these slugs are then consumed by our hedgehogs, given to baby birds by their doting mother and fathers and unfortunately sometimes consumed through the pellets or slugs by our cats and dogs. The death is horrific, the animals become neurological, dehydrated and succumb to renal failure. I hear you say well I don't use metaldehyde, I use ferris phosphate, this ingredient is still harmful in large quantities! Your hostas, lupins and dare I say, vegetables (still causes me trauma to see people actually applying this stuff to food crops) can cope with a little munching. Not to mention the other ways you can help prevent this (I'll have a post on that later). But your plants aren't worth the lives of our British wildlife. If you build a garden with a good ecosystem, (which can take the minimum of 3 years to recover after stopping the use of poisons), all of our wildlife will keep your garden healthy.
I'm here to help, so if you need ways in which to care for your plants that stop the use of slug pellets, please reach out🌿
