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The hedgehog is one of Britain's most beloved garden visitors, and one of its most vulnerable. Numbers have fallen dramatically over the past few decades, with tidy farming practices, busy roads and neat, fenced-in gardens all playing their part. The countryside is no longer the safe haven it once was, which makes our suburban plots far more important than most of us realise. A single garden can be a genuine refuge, but a connected network of them is better still. The good news is that hedgehogs ask for very little: a way in, a bit of untidiness, something to drink, and somewhere to sleep through the winter.
The single most useful thing you can do is let hedgehogs move between gardens. A hedgehog may roam up to two kilometres in a single night in search of food and mates, and a solid fence stops it dead. Cutting a small gap at the base of a fence or wall — roughly 13 centimetres square, about the size of a CD case — is enough for a hedgehog to pass through while keeping most pets and children where they belong.
Once one gap is made, hedgehogs will find it. Encouraging a whole street to join in creates a proper corridor, and it is often the difference between a garden that merely hosts the occasional visitor and one that supports a resident population.
Slug pellets are bad news for hedgehogs, and there is no way to use them safely in a garden you want wildlife to share. Hedgehogs eat slugs and snails, and a poisoned slug carries its poison straight into the hedgehog that eats it. Metaldehyde-based pellets have been withdrawn from sale in the UK, but other slug treatments can still cause harm, and the safer choice is simply not to use them.
There are gentler ways to manage slugs. Watering in the morning rather than the evening, encouraging ground beetles and frogs, and using barrier methods around precious seedlings all help. A few nibbled hostas are a small price for a garden that hums with life, and hedgehogs will do a good deal of the slug control themselves if you let them.
On warm, dry summer nights hedgehogs can struggle to find enough moisture, and a shallow dish of fresh water placed at ground level is a simple, genuinely valuable addition. Keep it shallow — around two to three centimetres deep — with a gently sloping side so that a hedgehog can climb out if it slips in. A sunken plant saucer works beautifully. Never put out milk, which hedgehogs cannot digest and which can make them seriously ill.
If you want to offer supplementary food, use meaty cat or dog food in jelly, or specialist hedgehog food, and put it out in the evening. Bread and milk are a classic mistake — please avoid both. Feed little and often, clean the dish daily, and never leave food out in daylight, when it may attract rats or be taken by cats.
Hedgehogs hibernate from roughly November to March, and they need a dry, sheltered, undisturbed spot to do it. A leaf pile in a quiet corner is ideal: gather fallen leaves into a heap around 30 to 40 centimetres deep, tuck it behind a shed or under a hedge, and leave it alone until spring. A log pile, a compost heap or a purpose-built hedgehog house will serve just as well.
Hedgehogs also appreciate a nest in summer, so leaving a quiet, overgrown corner year-round pays dividends.
None of this requires a large garden or a great deal of money. A fence gap, a dish of water, a heap of leaves and a firm decision to skip the slug pellets will between them turn an ordinary suburban plot into somewhere a hedgehog can feed, rest and raise a family. Add a little tolerance for untidiness, and you have a habitat. It is worth remembering that these small, prickly creatures are quietly relying on exactly the kind of garden you already have — so make a gap, leave the leaves, and see who turns up.
Jade Gorse shares practical, down-to-earth guidance on british gardening and plant care for readers across the UK.
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