When creating a backyard habitat, don’t forget the toad! Every garden needs a toad or two to help keep the bug population down. Toads can eat thousands of insects from a vegetable garden or flower bed. If you want to attract frogs or toads, the first thing you must do is not spray pesticides! Frogs and toads breath and drink through their skin and they are particularly vulnerable to chemicals. Before you spray, please do some research. The amphibians population overall has been on the decline as water and soil pollution rises.

Now that I have fussed, on with the toad house. These plans are quite simple and can be a project you can do with kids or an adult can put it together in no time. This toad house was made by kids but any adult can make it as neat and tidy as you want or any adult can be a kid and make it as messy and fun as you want.

This particular plan happened quite by accident and was made when we had some leftover hypertufa mix when making a completely different project.

What you need:
Rectangle plastic storage box – ours came from Lowes and cost $1. It is somewhat larger than a bread loaf container but really any decent sized plastic container will do.

Hypertufa – There are a zillion tufa recipes out there. Usually I use:
1 part Portland cement
1½ parts peat
1½ parts perlite

Wear gloves, be safe and all of that.

1. Take your tufa and press it into three sides of your rectangle plastic container. Once it dries, pop it out of the container and there you have it, toad house walls. You can use tufa on the bottom of the container to make a roof if you wish, or not make a roof. Since this toad abode was made from some leftover tufa from another project, we ran out and left the roof off. Silly us!

2. Once your tufa had hardened, select a moist spot in the garden and dig an area out which will hold the wall form. Ours went into a natural incline in order to make the open side of the rectangle wall form easier to use as a toad door. Pack dirt around the outer back and sides of the tufa wall form.

3. Place a flat rock on top of the tufa wall form, pile rocks and small logs around the open door side to your hearts content and ta da! You have a toad house.

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A second, similar version was made with a roof.

which was placed in a damp area of the woods and ended up looking lie this:

For more fun toad habitat projects, check out a discussion at Wildlife Gardeners Toad Habitat Ideas. There are some practical, simple plans submitted there.

Note: When checking your toad house for toad residents please remember that snakes and lizards are also going to like this habitat. We like snakes and lizards but BE CAREFUL, alright??