A Small Animal That Needs a Hand

Hedgehogs are in trouble. Once a familiar sight on warm summer evenings, their numbers have fallen sharply over recent decades, and the reasons are largely to do with us: tidy gardens, solid fences, busy roads, and the loss of the rough, scruffy edges they depend on. The good news is that a garden is not a small thing. Across the UK, gardens cover more ground than all our nature reserves put together, and when neighbouring plots are linked rather than barricaded, they become a genuine network of habitat.

You do not need a large garden, a big budget, or any particular expertise. A hedgehog-friendly corner is mostly about doing a little less: less tidying, less strimming, fewer barriers. Here is how to set one up properly.

Leave a Corner to Go a Little Wild

The single most useful thing you can do is to stop managing part of your garden so intensively. Pick a corner — a shady strip behind the shed, the rough ground beside a hedge, the awkward triangle behind the compost bins — and let it grow. Longer grass gives hedgehogs somewhere to forage, rest and nest, and the insects they eat thrive in it too.

To make that corner genuinely useful, add a few features:

• A log pile stacked loosely in a quiet spot, ideally with the wood touching the ground so it stays damp and full of beetles.
• A leaf mound left to rot down in a corner — hedgehogs will happily tuck themselves into the base of it.
• A compost heap that you turn only occasionally. A warm, undisturbed heap is a classic nesting site, so always check before you fork it over.
• Native planting such as hawthorn, hazel, wild honeysuckle or a stretch of wildflower seed. These draw in the beetles, caterpillars, slugs and earthworms that make up most of a hedgehog's diet.

Above all, resist the urge to tidy it in autumn. That rough, brown, untidy patch is doing exactly what it should.

Cut a Gap in the Fence

A hedgehog can travel well over a kilometre in a single night, but it cannot get through a solid fence panel, and a concrete gravel board along the bottom of a garden boundary is an absolute wall. To a hedgehog, a neat row of impenetrable gardens is a series of dead ends.

The fix takes about ten minutes. Cut or dig a square hole roughly 13cm by 13cm at ground level in the bottom of your fence or under a gate — big enough for a hedgehog, too small for most pets and much too small for a person. If you can, speak to your neighbours about doing the same, so that a series of gardens becomes a connected route through the neighbourhood rather than an isolated island.

Check your boundaries for other unintended blockages: patio gravel boards, brick walls, chicken wire buried at the base of a hedge, and gaps that have been filled with a stone or a plant pot over the years. If your garden is completely enclosed, even one gap makes a difference.

Water, Food and What to Avoid

A shallow dish of fresh water is one of the most valuable things you can provide, especially in hot, dry spells when natural water is hard to find. Use a saucer or a low-sided dish with no more than 4–5cm of water, and add a few stones or a piece of slate so that anything that falls in can climb back out. Keep it topped up and clean it regularly.

If you want to offer food, keep it simple and suitable:

• Meaty cat or dog food, in jelly rather than gravy, goes down well.
• Cat biscuits or specialist hedgehog food are handy and less likely to attract the wrong visitors.
• Never put out milk or bread. Hedgehogs cannot digest lactose, and bread fills them up without feeding them.
• Go easy on mealworms. A few are fine, but a diet heavy in them can cause serious bone problems.

Also avoid slug pellets, rat poison and any pesticide that works its way up the food chain. A hedgehog that eats a poisoned slug or a poisoned mouse is poisoned too, and slug pellets are a common and entirely avoidable cause of death.

Check Before You Strim

Strimmer and mower injuries are among the most frequent reasons hedgehogs are brought into wildlife rescue centres, and they are almost always preventable. A hedgehog's instinct when threatened is to curl up and stay still, which is no defence at all against a spinning nylon cord.

Before you cut long grass, walk the area first and look for a rounded, leaf-and-grass nest. Cut from the middle outwards, or start well away and work slowly towards the edge, giving anything hidden a chance to move off. Do the same before strimming under shrubs, along fence lines and around sheds. Long grass and piles of cuttings left in the open are prime nesting spots, so check them by hand rather than foot. If you find a nest, leave it well alone and come back in a few weeks.

Two other quick checks. Build bonfires on the day you light them, never a heap left standing for a week — a warm, dry pile of sticks is irresistible. And keep garden netting, including fruit netting, pegged securely at least 30cm above the ground, since hedgehogs and other wildlife can become badly tangled in loose netting. If you have a pond, make sure there is a gentle ramp or a shallow sloping edge so that a hedgehog that falls in can get out.

Keeping It Going Through the Year

Hedgehogs hibernate roughly from November to March, though mild winters mean some stay active much longer. In autumn, leave that pile of leaves and that untidy corner untouched; a good hibernation nest is dry, insulated and hidden, and disturbing one can be fatal. In spring, hold off the big tidy-up until the weather has properly warmed, as hedgehogs may still be asleep and females may already be raising hoglets.

Through summer, keep the water topped up and enjoy the evenings. If you see a hedgehog out in daylight, or one that looks small and thin going into autumn, that is a sign it needs help, so contact a local wildlife rescue. Otherwise, the best thing you can do is very little: a wild corner, a bowl of water, a small gap in the fence, and a careful look before you start the strimmer. That is a hedgehog-friendly garden, and it will repay you many times over on a warm June evening.