How to Create a Hedgehog-Friendly Garden

Why the Hedgehog Needs a Hand

There can be few sights more cheering in a British garden than a hedgehog pottering about in the dusk, snuffling through the borders in search of beetles and slugs. Yet those sightings are growing rarer. Hedgehog numbers have fallen sharply over the past few decades, and the reasons are rarely dramatic. It is the quiet loss of habitat — tidy fences, paved driveways, manicured lawns and the disappearance of hedgerows and rough field margins — that has squeezed them out.

The good news is that gardens are now one of their strongest refuges. Estimates suggest that a healthy proportion of our hedgehogs live in towns, villages and the rural fringe, moving between gardens under cover of darkness. A single hedgehog may travel a mile or more in a night. If your patch is on that route, and if it offers food, water and somewhere safe to sleep, you are already doing important work. Here is how to make it count.

Build a Hedgehog Highway

Hedgehogs are wanderers, and a garden sealed on all sides is a dead end no matter how lovely it looks. The single most valuable thing you can do is to create a gap in your boundary — a hedgehog-sized hole roughly 13 centimetres square, about the size of a CD case, at ground level.

• Cut a gap at the base of a wooden fence, or lift a gravel board slightly and cut a notch.
• For brick walls, remove one or two bricks near the base, or leave a mortar-free gap when building.
• With hedges, simply avoid weaving in netting or laying a gravel board tight to the ground.
• For wire fencing, cut and fold back a section, then bend the sharp ends inward so nothing snags.

Ideally, aim for two gaps on different sides, so a hedgehog can pass through rather than wander in and get stuck. Then talk to your neighbours. If three or four gardens in a row all do the same, you have created a proper corridor — and word spreads quickly once people realise how little it takes.

Water, Food and What to Avoid

A shallow dish of fresh water is a genuine lifesaver, particularly in hot, dry spells and again in autumn when hedgehogs are trying to put on weight. Use a sturdy dish no more than a few centimetres deep, with a gentle slope so a small hog can climb out. Clean it and refill daily.

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

• Do put out meat-based cat or dog food, either tinned or dry kitten biscuits.
• Do feed after dusk and remove leftovers in the morning to avoid attracting rats and foxes.
• Don't give milk or bread. Hedgehogs are lactose intolerant, and both can cause serious illness.
• Don't rely on slug pellets. Even where their use is restricted, the pellets and poisoned slugs do real harm. Encouraging hedgehogs, frogs and birds is a far better pest control.

One caution: a bowl of food will sometimes bring a hedgehog out in daylight, which is not normal behaviour. A hog seen in the daytime is usually in trouble — underweight, injured or unwell. Contact your local wildlife or hedgehog rescue straight away rather than trying to treat it yourself.

Give Them Somewhere to Sleep

Hedgehogs need two kinds of shelter: a summer nest for daytime dozing, and a hibernation nest from roughly November to March. Both are easy to provide if you are willing to be a little untidy.

• Leave a corner of the garden wild — long grass, a nettle patch, a few fallen leaves. This is five-star hedgehog accommodation.
• Build a log pile in a shaded spot. Piles of prunings and logs offer cover, insects and nesting material all at once.
• Let a compost heap sit undisturbed. A warm, dry heap is a favourite hibernation site — but take great care turning it in spring.
• Buy or build a hedgehog house: a wooden box with a short entrance tunnel, sited in a quiet, dry spot facing away from the prevailing wind.

Resist the urge to clear everything in autumn. Leaves, seed heads and dead stems are not mess — they are habitat, and they shelter the insects that hedgehogs depend on.

Check Before You Cut, Burn or Dig

Most hedgehog injuries in gardens happen during routine jobs. A few habits will prevent nearly all of them.

• Strimmers and mowers: walk the long grass first, and cut from the middle outwards so anything hiding has an escape route. Raise the cutting height where you can.
• Bonfires: never build a pile and leave it. Either move the entire heap to a fresh spot on the day you light it, or rebuild it from scratch just before lighting. Check it once more with a torch.
• Ponds: hedgehogs can swim but cannot climb out of steep-sided water. Add a gently sloping stone or a piece of roughened wood as a ramp.
• Netting: keep pea netting and fruit cage mesh taut and at least 15 centimetres above the ground. Loose, low netting tangles hedgehogs badly.
• Drains and holes: cover or fence anything a hedgehog could fall into and not climb out of.

None of this demands a rewilded estate. A gap in the fence, a dish of water, one scruffy corner and a torch before you strike a match will do more for hedgehogs than most of us realise. Do that, and you will not simply be helping a struggling species — you will be making your garden a livelier, kinder place to be after dark.