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Creating a Pet Friendly Garden
20 September 2021

Designing a garden comes with many factors that need to be taken into consideration when choosing the right plants; soil type, environmental conditions, positioning are just to name a few, but one factor which can easily be ignored is the impact your plant choice can have on your pets.

We all love and adore our pets, from the over energetic dog, to the lazy, Garfield like cat, and they hold a special place in our hearts, our homes and our gardens. Therefore, we want to be certain that our gardens are safe, ensuring that the plants included are not putting our pets in any potential danger.

Unfortunately, there is the capability for plants to be toxic to pets. Eating flowers, bulbs, berries and leaves of various plants can cause common pets to fall ill, but the risk of severe poisoning is very low. There is no need to make this a priority caution when designing your garden as cats, dogs and other household pets are fastidious creatures and are wary about what they eat. Edible features with enough toxicity to cause any harm, hold a vulgare taste to the common house pet and will only cause serious harm when a substantial amount is consumed. That being said, pet owners should be aware that a handful of plants present a possible hazard to pets and ought to be deliberated when including them in a garden design.

Animal friendly hedging also applies to those situated in areas where livestock are present. Growing a hedge around farmland or even in places where farm animals pass by means that an evaluation of the selection of hedging plants should be made to ensure grazing cattle are unharmed.

It’s important to know which plants best suit your garden whilst being safe for your pets or nearby animals. Pet friendly plants in no way limit your choice as the majority of our hedging plants are completely safe to animals and will satisfy your garden needs with their practicality and aesthetic appearance. Choose from a huge range of evergreens, deciduous, flowering hedge plants, hedge plants with colourful foliage and hedges with fruits and watch them thrive with the peace of mind, knowing they hold no threat to your pets.

Below you will find the hedging plants of which we stock that are considered to be harmful to pets and farmland animals. This list is in conjunction to the RHS guidelines for poisonous plants however, here at best4hedging we are yet to receive any reports of our hedging plants causing harm to animals and have had numerous customers successfully plant the following species in gardens where pets are present.

For all plants that are harmful to dogs, please see dogstrust.org

Pet owners also need to be aware of the dangers of using pellets, pesticides and other garden chemicals as these can cause more harm than any hedging plant. Ensure that before purchasing any chemicals for you garden and plants, read the labels thoroughly to make sure they are safe for your pets or surrounding animals. Better still, if you want to use feed, we supply a fantastic range of animal friendly, garden essentials such as Root Grow and Bone Meal and for pest control, consider the more organic methods that pose no threat to your pets and are beneficial to the ecosystem.