LET THEM HOG THE HEDGES!

Rabbits ate 1,000 of his crocuses in a weekend – and he had to chase other visitors off his flowerbeds clad in just a bath towel. But Monty Don says that’s all part of the fun

Although foxes, badgers, deer and hedgehogs are beautiful and fascinating when they visit, there are few mammals that the gardener is keen to have in permanent residence. The problem is that most mammals burrow and grub and dig and excavate and then feast on precious plants. But, of course, they are a part of the rich pattern of wildlife that a healthy garden can support and indeed, with a little tolerance, welcome.

However, in my own garden sometimes that tolerance is stretched quite thin. Foxes are rarely seen but are a constant threat to our chickens. Mink sometimes come up from the nearby river and will kill the hens for fun, and once I caught a polecat in a humane trap after he had killed four of my ducks. I set him free after swearing him not to do it again... For a month or so a local badger took great delight in ripping up the grass paths in search of earthworms, and not even our golden retrievers Nigel and Nellie can control our resident rabbit population. But they are all part of the food chain and we are privileged to share the garden with them.

Some of the mammals I very seldom see are even more fascinating. We have yellow- necked mice in the hedgerows and coppice, and I find hazel nuts gnawed with round holes which are the sure sign of a dormouse. Occasionally, I see a stoat or a weasel that will look at me as though I have intruded on their territory. The only mammals that we’ve never been visited by in our 26 years here are deer – and perhaps, seeing that deer can be voracious feeders of prized plants, that’s a blessing.

We have played host to a couple of lambs in our orchard until they were weaned and able to return to the flock but they ate little other than grass. Once I was getting into my bath and I saw a couple of cows munching my garden not ten yards from the bathroom. Clad only in a towel, I rushed out and herded them through the garden and back into the neighbouring field. Luckily they had not done too much damage.

HEDGEHOGS

Over the past decade or so, hedgehogs have become catastrophically endangered. A current research project at Oxford University is measuring the extent of that decline, especially in agricultural landscapes, and they are coming to the conclusion that the only habitat where they have a foothold is in suburban and rural gardens. To someone of my generation this is unthinkable. In the 1980s, squashed hedgehogs were horribly common on any country road but in fact this was a measure of their ubiquity – road kill is nearly always a measure of abundance rather than rarity. The reason seems to be simple lack of habitat both for them and their preferred food and, like so many seemingly sudden declines, the loss has been gradual. Hedgehogs’ prefer red diet is essentially carnivorous with a lot of worms, beetles and slugs, topped up with caterpillars, millipedes and earwigs. An adult will eat about 100 such invertebrates every night. Obviously this makes them the gardener’s friend – quite apart from the fact that they are

charming and do no harm. It has to be said that they will also eat birds’ eggs, young birds, mice, voles and even baby rabbits.

Hedgehogs will typically travel up to two miles a night looking for food and can climb – there are stories of them hibernating in thatched roofs – and swim and squeeze through seemingly tiny holes.

They need to visit plenty of gardens to find enough food and a mate, so it’s important that they can travel from one garden to another. You can help by making a hole of at least 13cm by 13cm, cut in a fence or a garden gate – and if possible, persuade your neighbours to do the same in their own gardens.

So what else can we gardeners do to encourage and support them? First and foremost, provide cover. Piles of wood, leaves and compost heaps are all good news for hedgehogs. Never use slug pellets as hedgehogs will eat the slugs that have been poisoned by them – as well as sometimes the pellets themselves. Go steady when tidying long grass or weeds with a strimmer – they can cause awful wounds to a sleeping hedgehog. And above all, resist tidiness, especially over winter. There may be a hedgehog sleeping in that scruffy corner.

VOLES

Apart from foxes and grey squirrels, voles are one of the mammals most frequently found in our gardens. These small mice- l ike rodents live under and in tussocky grass. They eat bulbs, roots, seeds and flower buds as well as gnawing bark. The short- tailed field vole tends to cause huge damage and then eat itself out of house and home, providing easy meat for owls. There is nothing you can do except be pleased for the boost in the owl population.

Our gardens are hedgehogs’ last refuges