Why your town garden matters more than you think

Hedgehogs are in trouble. Numbers have fallen sharply over recent decades, and the humble garden has become one of the most important habitats we have left for them. In towns and suburbs, our patchwork of lawns, borders, vegetable beds and hedgerows offers shelter, nesting sites and a steady supply of beetles, caterpillars and slugs. The catch is that a single garden, however lovely, is not enough. A hedgehog needs to roam — a good night's foraging can cover a mile or more — and it must be able to move through the landscape safely.

The good news is that everything you need to do is simple, cheap, and mostly involves doing a little less rather than more.

Open up a hedgehog highway

The single most effective thing you can do is create a gap that lets hedgehogs pass between gardens. A solid fence or wall is an impassable barrier, and a hedgehog will happily spend an hour pacing along it, burning energy it cannot spare.

• Cut a 13cm x 13cm gap — roughly the size of a CD case — at the base of a fence panel, or under a gate.
• If you have gravel boards, lift one the width of a brick to create a permanent tunnel.
• Talk to your neighbours. A connected run of five or six gardens becomes a genuine corridor.
• If a fence must stay solid, cut a gap and line it with a short length of pipe or a sturdy tunnel to stop pets squeezing through.

Place your gap along the boundary hedgehogs already use — usually the quiet, overgrown edge rather than the middle of a tidy border.

Leave a wild corner

A tidy garden is a poor garden for wildlife. If you can spare even a square metre in a quiet corner, resist the urge to clear it.

• Leaf piles and log stacks — hedgehogs nest in dry leaves and beneath rotting wood. Leave them undisturbed from October to March.
• Long grass around the base of a hedge gives cover and insect food. Cut it in stages, or leave it entirely.
• A hedgehog house in a sheltered, dry spot, facing away from the prevailing wind and rain. Quiet and dry matters more than any particular direction.
• A compost heap is a favourite nesting site, so always check before turning it with a fork.
• Native plants such as hawthorn, honeysuckle, ivy and wildflowers bring in the beetles and caterpillars hedgehogs actually eat.

Food and water — and the one thing never to use

Slug pellets are the greatest danger in any hedgehog garden. Both metaldehyde and ferric phosphate formulations can cause harm, either directly or through the slugs and snails that have eaten them. There is no safe way to use them where hedgehogs roam. Instead, pick slugs off by hand at dusk, encourage frogs, birds and ground beetles, or sink a beer trap into the soil.

Water matters just as much, especially in hot spells. Use a shallow dish no more than 2–3cm deep, with a stone or a small ramp inside so anything that falls in can climb back out. Keep it somewhere you can see from the kitchen window and refresh it daily.

Supplementary food can genuinely help, particularly for autumn juveniles trying to reach hibernation weight:

• Meat-based cat or dog food — in jelly, not gravy, and never fish-flavoured.
• Cat or dog biscuits as a crunchy standby.
• Dried mealworms only occasionally — they are not a balanced diet and cause serious problems if fed in quantity.
• Never bread and milk. It causes diarrhoea and can kill a hedgehog.

Put food out at dusk and take leftovers in each morning so you do not attract rats.

Make the garden safe after dark

Hedgehogs are nocturnal and prone to accidents. A few small changes prevent most of them.

• Ponds: add a gently sloping ramp or a shelf of stones at one edge so a hedgehog that falls in can climb out.
• Netting: roll up football, tennis and pea netting when it is not in use. Hedgehogs become tangled and rarely escape unaided.
• Drains and holes: cover open gullies and light wells with a grille.
• Strimmers and mowers: check long grass by hand before cutting. Nests are easily missed.
• Bonfires: rebuild the pile on the day you burn it, or move it a few feet and check underneath first.
• Poisons: rat bait and pesticides travel up the food chain. Avoid both.

Through the year

In spring and summer, keep water topped up and leave your wild corner alone. In autumn, a hedgehog needs to reach around 600g or more to survive hibernation — if you see a small one out in daylight in October or November, it needs help, so contact a local hedgehog rescue. In winter, avoid disturbing leaf piles and log stacks, and check compost heaps before use. On mild winter days a hedgehog may wake briefly and go looking for a drink, so leave a shallow dish out if you can.

Do these few things and your town garden stops being an island. It becomes part of something much bigger — a quiet, connected route that lets hedgehogs move through the neighbourhood safely, one gap in the fence at a time.