WHEN my wife was tidying the garden, she moved a pile of plant pots that were tucked away in a quiet corner to find a pair of golden eyes staring at her from the darkness into daylight. She called me because she was uncertain what the creature might be – it was those beautiful golden eyes that provided the answer. It was a toad, more formally known as the common toad.

Toads have never ranked among the most popular of creatures, often being associated in the past with witchcraft and the ability to cause warts in humans if they were handled.

All that is rubbish, like so many legendary tales of toads. For example, there are accounts of their ability to exercise control over horses if a complicated ritual was followed, or the longstanding belief that the head of a toad contains a valuable gemstone that has the power to cure certain ailments and to detect poison.

The truth is they are very interesting animals who are amphibians equally at home on land or in water, and they are most useful to have around the garden because they control pests. Furthermore, they are completely harmless to humans.

Much of the aura of bad fortune that has long been associated with toads arose through their links with witches and witchcraft. People thought that some witches could disguise themselves as toads to gain access to premises or to cast wicked spells upon people, houses or livestock.

It is around this time of year that toads seek cosy shelter beneath stones and logs, or holes in walls or trees, there to hibernate for the winter. I wondered if our toad had selected those plant pots as his winter quarters.

We left him in peace so he might still be there, but I do not wish to disturb him more than necessary. Toads emerge from hibernation in the spring, generally around the middle of March or early April, and it is then that they suffer terrible losses while trying to cross roads.

They have absolutely no road sense and no appreciation of the dangers from moving vehicles. Evolution has not educated them into the fact that our roads are literally massive death-traps, but it doesn’t help when they move in great numbers at night in darkness. Consequently, many thousands are inadvertently killed.

The reason for this determined and dangerous expedition is a search for a toad’s own special breeding pond, a mission that will not be halted by roads, high walls or other obstacles. When toad will a-wooing go, nothing will stand in his way and his climbing abilities enable him to cross most barriers, man-made or otherwise.

He and his chosen lady-love will mate in the water when the temperature is right, the female laying her spawn in long strings that are woven around water plants. They contain rows of tiny black beads in single strands, not in double rows like frogs’ spawn. The youngsters will hatch about June or July, and in the absence of natural ponds many will seek refuge in suitable gardens and parks.

One problem for many of us is being able to tell the difference between a frog and a toad. Superficially, they look so much alike, but one obvious point of identification is that a toad always walks whilst a frog will hop along in great leaps. As a consequence, toads are slow-moving and somewhat cumbersome. Their skins are also dry and rather warty, unlike the frog which is wet and smooth to the touch. Sometimes toads’ colours can be dark and our visitor was almost black, very difficult to see in the shadows – it was those remarkable golden eyes that revealed his presence.

Their colours can vary from grey to dark red or even a dull green, but brown is their usual colour and this enables them to hide among the vegetation. It is often difficult to notice a toad sitting among leaves, stones or fallen wood. So, if you disturb such a creature in the garden, the simplest form of identification is its style of movement – if it walks, it’s a toad and if it hops, it’s a frog.

While frogs and toads do not readily endear themselves through not being cute and cuddly like squirrels, baby rabbits or pheasant chicks, they are valuable assets to the countryside and need all our help and protection. Our gardens and parks will provide safe havens if they offer suitable cover in the form of logs, rocks and hedges.

Despite any care or protection we might offer locally, the wider scale shows that many of the world’s amphibians are threatened with extinction by the year 2050.

This is due to a combination of factors including climate change, pollution, disease and loss of habitat. Experts have predicted more than half of the 81 species of amphibian native to Europe face extinction by 2050, with the remainder suffering a dwindling population over the same period.

And one of them in danger is the common toad of Britain. One solution is to take specimens into captivity to ensure their survival, but even something as simple as a garden pond is a great help because so many natural ponds have ceased to exist. It is difficult to imagine our countryside and indeed our gardens without any frogs and toads. We are always pleased to see them in our garden and pond.

Now that it is mid- October, many of us will be trimming our garden hedges in the knowledge that any nesting birds will have completed their tasks and that the cutting will stimulate new growth in the spring. It should also make the hedges look tidier.

On its website, the Royal Horticultural Society offers advice on the best time to prune hedges.

The simplest is that we should prune new deciduous hedges in winter, new evergreens in spring and established hedges once a year, always bearing in mind that they might house nesting birds and other wildlife. In addition, there is specific advice for particular types of hedging or hedge plants, but that is far too lengthy and detailed to enumerate here.

You can find it on the RHS site.

With that annual task in mind, I have received by email some advice in the form of a verse. It reads: Cut in June, much too soon, Cut in July, it could die; Cut August if you must Cut September ... … …?

Cut October … ... … ?

My correspondent cannot recall the endings of those final two lines and none of my reference books contains this old verse. It may be that somewhere out there is a gardening expert who can provide those endings.

Among the quotes I did manage to find is: “One thorn bush does not make a hedge” and: “He who sows thorns should not go barefoot”

while another reminds us that: “A hedge between keeps friendships green.”

All good rustic common sense.