Why hedgehogs need a helping hand

Hedgehogs are one of Britain's best-loved garden visitors, and one of its most vulnerable. Numbers have fallen sharply over recent decades, with tidy fences, busy roads, loss of hedgerows and pesticide use all taking their toll. The good news is that a single garden can make a real difference — and a street of gardens working together can make a difference that lasts for generations.

Hedgehogs are nocturnal wanderers. An adult hog may travel a mile or more in a single night, crossing gardens, allotments and patches of rough grass in search of beetles, worms, slugs and caterpillars. If your garden sits within that nightly route, it becomes part of something much bigger than a few square metres of lawn. Your job is simply to make the journey safe, and to give a tired traveller somewhere to rest.

Build a hedgehog highway through your fences

A hedgehog cannot get through a solid fence panel, and modern gardens are increasingly sealed off from one another. The single most useful thing you can do is cut a small gap at the base of your boundary — a hedgehog highway. Thirteen centimetres square is plenty: roughly the size of a CD case, and small enough that cats, foxes and toddlers are unlikely to squeeze through.

• Cut a notch at ground level in wooden fence panels, or lift a gravel board slightly on its supports.
• If you have a wall, leave out a couple of bricks at the base — a ready-made doorway.
• For gates, leave a gap of about 10cm underneath, or raise the gate a fraction on its hinges.
• Mark the gap with a small painted hedgehog or a pebble so you remember it when you next replace a panel.
• Talk to your neighbours. One gap in each garden creates a continuous route; a gap only in yours leads nowhere.

If you are planning a hedge, choose native species such as hawthorn, blackthorn, beech or hornbeam. A hedge is both a corridor and a larder, packed with the insects a hedgehog needs.

Put out the right food — and never slug pellets

A bowl of food can help hogs through lean spells, particularly in late summer when they are building fat reserves for hibernation. Keep it simple:

• Do offer meat-based cat or dog food (pate-style, not gravy), or a purpose-made hedgehog food.
• Do add a shallow dish of water alongside it, every single night.
• Don't give bread and milk. Hedgehogs are lactose intolerant and this old-fashioned remedy causes diarrhoea and dehydration.
• Don't leave mealworms as a main meal. They are low in calcium and can cause bone problems if fed heavily.

The most important rule of all concerns slug pellets. Metaldehyde and ferric phosphate pellets kill the slugs, then poison the hedgehogs, birds and other creatures that eat them. Hedgehogs are natural slug controllers — a healthy hog can eat dozens in a night. Encourage the animal and you will need no pellets at all. If slugs are a genuine problem, use beer traps, hand-pick after rain, or plant slug-resistant varieties and accept a little cosmetic damage.

Water: the forgotten lifeline

Hedgehogs get thirsty, and in a dry summer a garden without water is a desert. A shallow ceramic saucer of clean water, refreshed daily, is one of the kindest things you can leave out. Position it in a quiet corner and keep the level low — around 2–3cm — so a small hog can drink without toppling in.

If you have a pond, make sure it has gentle escape routes. Hedgehogs swim well but cannot climb smooth, steep-sided walls, and drownings are sadly common. Add a shallow ledge, a sloping stone ramp or a piece of sturdy netting draped over the edge to the water. Check any pond regularly in hot weather, and cover drains, gullies and steep-sided containers with mesh.

Make a corner that feels like home

Hedgehogs need somewhere dry, sheltered and undisturbed to sleep, nest and hibernate. A simple wooden hedgehog house, tucked into a quiet border with its entrance facing away from prevailing wind, will often be used. So will a pile of logs, a stack of leaves behind a shed, or a brushwood heap under a hedge.

• Leave one patch of long grass unmown — it is a nursery for the insects hogs eat.
• Resist the urge to tidy every leaf in autumn. A deep mulch of leaves is both bedding and a home for grubs.
• Choose peat-free compost and avoid chemical weedkillers, which strip the food chain from the bottom up.
• Keep a wild corner. Award-winning lawns are the opposite of what hedgehogs need.

Protect them from everyday garden hazards

Hedgehogs are trusting and slow to react, which makes ordinary garden tasks dangerous. Take five minutes to check before you start:

• Bonfires: build the pile on the day you burn it, or move it entirely. A hedgehog will happily hibernate in the middle of a stack of branches.
• Strimmers and mowers: walk the long grass first, and cut from the middle outwards rather than starting at the edges where hogs shelter.
• Netting: keep fruit netting, pea netting and football nets off the ground. Hogs get tangled and can be badly injured.
• Ponds and pools: add that escape ramp, as above.
• Dogs: keep an eye on curious dogs in the evening, when hogs are active.

If you find a hedgehog out in daylight, or one that appears wobbly, thin or injured, it needs help — contact a local wildlife rescue for advice. Otherwise, leave well alone, enjoy the rustle in the border after dark, and remember that every gap in a fence is a small act of kindness that ripples far beyond your own garden boundary.