Why Hedgehogs Need a Hand in the Suburbs

Hedgehogs are in trouble. Numbers across the UK have fallen sharply over the past few decades, and the reasons are depressingly ordinary: tidy gardens, sealed fences, busy roads, and the disappearance of the rough, scruffy edges where insects thrive. The good news is that a suburban garden can be genuinely valuable habitat, and the changes needed are small, cheap and often less work than what you are doing now.

A single garden is rarely enough. Hedgehogs roam between one and two kilometres a night, so what matters is the whole neighbourhood working as a connected patchwork. Your patch can be the link that joins it all together.

Leave a Wild Corner

The single most useful thing you can do is stop tidying one small area. A leaf pile, a patch of long grass, or a heap of prunings in a quiet corner gives hedgehogs somewhere to nest, rest and hibernate. They do not want a manicured border; they want cover and a reliable supply of beetles, caterpillars, slugs and earthworms.

• Make a leaf heap: pile autumn leaves in a corner and leave them. Add a few twigs on top to stop them blowing away.
• Build a log pile: stacked wood, especially partly buried, stays damp and attracts the invertebrates hedgehogs eat.
• Let the grass grow: even a square metre of longer grass makes a difference. Mow it once in late autumn if it gets away from you.
• Skip the strimmer: always check long grass and leaf piles by hand before cutting. Hibernating hedgehogs are injured this way every year.

If you want to go a step further, a purpose-built hedgehog house placed in a quiet, dry spot with the entrance facing away from prevailing wind gives a reliable hibernation site. Line it with dry leaves, not hay, which holds damp.

Provide Shallow Water

Hedgehogs get thirsty, particularly in hot, dry spells and while nursing young. A shallow dish of fresh water at ground level is one of the easiest gifts you can offer. Keep it topped up and clean it out regularly.

Make sure there is a way out: a steep-sided bowl can trap a hedgehog. Add a few stones or a gentle ramp so anything that falls in can climb out. If you have a pond, always provide an escape route such as a sloping stone edge or a piece of roughened wood trailing into the water. Drowning in garden ponds is a real and avoidable cause of hedgehog deaths.

Never put out bread and milk. Hedgehogs are lactose intolerant and bread has no useful nutritional value for them. If you want to feed, use tinned meaty dog or cat food, or a proprietary hedgehog food, and offer it after dusk in dry weather.

Cut a Gap in the Fence

This is the change that transforms a garden from an island into part of a network. A single 13cm by 13cm square gap at ground level, roughly the size of a CD case, is plenty for a hedgehog to pass through and far too small for most dogs or foxes.

• Ask neighbours on both sides to do the same, so the gap lines up into a continuous route.
• If you cannot cut the fence, lift a couple of gravel boards or leave a section of border unfenced.
• Keep the gap clear of leaves and debris so it does not quietly silt up over winter.
• Mark it discreetly, or you will forget it is there and block it when you next move a compost bin.

Gravel boards and concrete panels are the usual culprits. Even a small channel dug under a gate and lined with a short length of pipe will do the job.

Make the Whole Garden Safer

Once hedgehogs are visiting, a few hazards become your responsibility. Check the garden before you use anything sharp or dangerous.

• Strimmers and mowers: walk the area first. Hedgehogs curl up rather than flee, which is exactly the wrong instinct around machinery.
• Slug pellets: avoid metaldehyde and ferric phosphate baits where hedgehogs forage. Slug pellets are a documented risk to any animal that eats the poisoned slugs.
• Netting: keep fruit netting taut and at least 30cm above the ground so hedgehogs cannot tangle in it.
• Bonfires: rebuild the pile on the day you burn it, or move it entirely. A bonfire heap is a perfect nest site.
• Drains and holes: cover any open drain, soakaway or steep-sided hole.

If you have a compost heap, take care when turning it. Slow-worm and hedgehog both use them, and both will sit tight rather than run.

Watch, Record and Encourage Others

Much of the reward is in the observing. A torch on a mild evening, or a trail camera pointed at the gap in your fence, will tell you quickly whether your efforts are working. Footprints in a muddy gap, or droppings that are dark, cylindrical and full of beetle cases, confirm a visitor even when you never see one.

Tell your neighbours what you are doing. A street where six gardens each leave a wild corner, keep a water dish and cut a small gap will support far more hedgehogs than one carefully managed plot. It costs almost nothing, takes an afternoon, and turns a collection of separate gardens into something that actually works for wildlife.