How to Keep Raccoons Out of My Garden

NEED LOCAL HELP? We have wildlife removal professionals servicing 95% of the USA. Click here to hire a local raccoon removal expert in your home town. Updated 2018. But read the below advice first!

If you already have a raccoon problem in your garden, the best thing that you could do would be to call a local wildlife removal company. Maybe you don’t want to do that just yet, so you’re looking up methods that you can use to deal with this nuisance yourself. I’m going to talk about some of these methods, as well as about ways of preventing raccoons from being attracted to your garden.



What to do if raccoons have already attacked your garden, and you don’t want to reach out to animal control? Well, you definitely have to do something, because once a raccoon has discovered a good food source, it will keep coming back. You can try and trap the raccoon in a live cage trap. Put a couple of traps in your garden, put some bait in, and check in the morning. This tactic is potentially dangerous for two reasons. One, if it’s a female raccoon, it’s possible it has young somewhere, which you’ve just orphaned and left to starve to death (probably in someone’s attic or chimney). Two, what will you do with the raccoon once it’s trapped? Keeping the raccoon is very bad idea. Don’t. Releasing the raccoon in nature may lead to other environmental issues, aside of it probably not being in accordance with state and local laws. Killing the raccoon – even if you have the stomach for it, it’s surely illegal if you don’t have a hunting permit, and may lead to criminal charges if the authorities find out.

Keep a watchdog in your yard that can guard your garden. First of all, you need to find a good watchdog that will do its job. Secondly, you need to be confident that no one will be bothered at night by the dog’s bark. Also, keep in mind that raccoons carry diseases that can be contracted by dogs. And last but not least, if you’re a big dog lover, I wouldn’t risk keeping a watchdog – it will probably just end up taking up residence on our couch.

Noises and lights. I keep hearing people recommend installing bright light or stroboscopic lights to make the raccoons leave. It’s pretty unlikely that the raccoon would mind the artificial light especially if it discovered food in the area. And once it has a taste, it will surely determine that the food is worth any risk of exposure the light may bring. Same with noises, placing a radio in the garden, for example, might make a new raccoon in the area a little bit shy, though it probably won’t. And if the raccoon has already visited your garden a couple of times, the noises coming from the radio won’t do much to scare it away.

What’s an effective way to prevent raccoons from getting into your garden? Installing a good fence can keep raccoons out of your garden. You have to make sure that the fence is tall enough and deep enough, making it hard for the raccoon to climb it or dig its way beneath it. The materials should also be of superior quality so that the raccoon can’t make a hole in it by gnawing or tearing. An electric fence might be a smart move.

There’s other little things you can do around your household to ensure that you’re not attracting any raccoons to your garden. These include not leaving any pet food outside, keeping your garbage cans secured, not having bird feeders hanging around, and obstructing raccoon access to your home by capping the chimney and making sure that they don’t have any points of access to your attic.

Go back to the Raccoons in the attic home page.