Moles leave me in a hole...

I've just joined gardening.co.uk and put a question on the website about moles and Val Bradley has given me your website for anti-mole bulbs that can be planted in the garden  

Our position is that we have just swapped a small piece of land with our neighbour to widen his drive and make my garden wider (roughly 1/2 acre in total). With his piece of land came a family of moles, which he probably did not know about because he has over 2 1/2 acres.

When we acquired this land (about 18 months ago) i had a gardener plant a large flower bed surrounded by a wall plus put in hedging (for the birds) and all was well for 6 months then we started to see all these mole hills appearing. I've kept taking the earth from the molehills to keep them flat but its getting more and more and we do not wish to poison them or anything. I wondered if your bulbs would do the job but do not wish them to move to another part of the garden as the lawn is looking like a bomb site now!!  

Can you advise please  

All the best  

Ken Geggus

Many thanks for your recent message regarding the mole problem you’ve unfortunately inherited! Mole infestations can be a real problem as apart from the obvious visual appearance in lawns, their network of tunnels can cause havoc by undermining beds, borders and vegetable gardens and causing damage to roots of plants.  

The Anti-Mole Bulbs we supply have certainly been used with good effect in the past, both in the formal gardens surrounding our own Harrod Horticultural Kitchen Garden and also in other commercial areas such as golf clubs. The bulbs are members of the allium family, and it’s the strong onion/garlic odour given off by the bulbs which sends the moles tunnelling off to territories new. Each container of 10 bulbs covers an area measuring 500sq metres, which by my reckoning converts to 0.12 acres – meaning you will need around 8 or 9 packs of bulbs to completely drive them off your area of land.

I’ve attached a copy of the instructions to help you with your ‘mole herding’ but one thing to bear in mind is the planting information – the bulbs should be inserted before the first frosts, in around October or November, which may well scupper your chances of moving on the moles this summer!

All is not lost however, as we do have some alternatives. The Humane Mole Trap will catch the underground invaders unharmed, and we’ve also got our hands on a new Solar Mole Repeller which will clear the tunnelling pests from an area with a 7500sqft radius (around 700sqm).   Hopefully one of these many products will provide a solution to your problem! 

Martin