Give them a hedge start
Make a point of helping hedgehogs with homes, food and safe paths and these incredible creatures will repay you in the garden
Hedgehogs have to be our most adorable native mammal – and they are also a gardener’s best friend, gobbling up pesky slugs, snails and caterpillars.
So at this time of year, good gardeners should pay special attention to these amazing little animals.
I work closely with the British Hedgehog Preservation Society as an ambassador for the great work they do to protect them. But we can all do our bit in our gardens to make life easier for these hibernating heroes.
Sadly, recent findings suggest the number of hedgehogs in the UK has fallen by more than half since 2000.
It’s believed to be due to the urbanisation of gardens, which reduces hedgerows and important habitats, as well as their insect prey.
But gardeners are staging a fightback and that decline has slowed in recent years. And there’s lots you can do to help convert your outdoor space into a place hedgehogs love.
WELCOME HOME
Crucially, you need to make your garden accessible. As you may have gathered from their rather telling name, hedges are their perfect haunt. That is because they provide a cover, a habitat for bugs and allow them to hop from garden to garden.
If your garden has a fenced boundary, don’t fret, you can easily help hedgehogs out by adding a highway. This is a Cd-sized cut out for them to use as a doorway.
As hedgehogs have such poor eyesight and rely on their hearing, it stops them from getting muddled and wandering into the road.
Label their new entrance with a proudly placed “hedgehog highway” sign and you might find your neighbours join in the effort to make their garden into a haven.
Find more information from the BHPS campaign, Hedgehog Street, which gives tips for keeping your green spaces suitable for these marvellous mammals.
HABITAT FACTS
Once you have created a way for them to get in, you will want these prickly pals to keep coming back.
The easiest thing to do to keep hedgehogs happy is provide them
with a safe space. You can easily build your own hedgehog house in an afternoon. Visit my website, daviddomoney.com, for videos or blogs on how to do this.
Essentially, the idea is to use an old wooden crate with an entrance tunnel 15cm wide and 11cm high to ensure predators can’t get in.
Leaving areas to grow wild or building a log pile is also effective.
But do not be tempted to take a
It stops them from getting muddled and wandering into roads
hedgehog from the wild and bring it home as it may have dependent young in a nest that will starve to death without it.
FOOD FAVOURITES
A single hedgehog can travel for more than a mile in a night to find food, so why not open your very own hedgehog cafe? They will certainly put in the legwork to find it.
Hedgehogs are lactose intolerant, so although they will eat dairy products it causes them tummy discomfort.
Chicken or turkey-based cat food is ideal, and you should buy the ones in jelly instead of gravy so that it is not too salty and dehydrating.
Hedgehogs will feast and fatten themselves up before going into hibernation in November, so this is when they are really searching for food.
Make sure the supply is reaching them instead of the neighbourhood cats. Hedgehog feeding stations are sized specifically to let hedgehogs access food and also keep it covered and out of the rain.
Don’t forget to provide an ample water supply. Water sources can be hard found, especially in winter, so I always put out a shallow water bowl that’s an inch or two deep and keep it topped up and refreshed daily.
SAFE AND COSY
At this time of year, it’s vital to keep checking for hedgehogs in piles of leaves or garden vegetation you intend to burn on the bonfire.
Avoid building a bonfire until the last possible moment and check it by lifting sections with a broom handle and listening for their snuffle sounds.
When the time comes to light it up, start one side first to allow them to escape out the other side if needed.
Take time to safety-proof your garden too. Cover drains and holes and discard netting, twine, string or elastic which might ensnare and injure them.
With ponds, I place a plank of wood into the water and staple bamboo canes on it horizontally for hedgehogs to grip on to when climbing out.
Hedgehogs have been around for 15 million years and we need to keep their numbers up. So keep them safe and they will repay you by keeping your garden growing.