Why hedgehogs need our gardens more than ever

Hedgehogs are one of Britain's best-loved garden visitors, but their numbers have fallen sharply over the past few decades. The countryside has become harder to navigate — fewer hedgerows, more intensively managed fields, busier roads — and so our gardens have quietly become one of their most important strongholds. A single suburban street, joined up properly, can offer a hedgehog everything it needs: shelter, food, water and safe passage.

The encouraging news is that the changes required are small, cheap, and often involve doing a little less rather than a little more. Hedgehogs are not demanding guests. Give them a wild corner, a gap in the fence and a dish of water, and you may well find you have a resident by the following spring.

Cut a hedgehog highway through your boundaries

A hedgehog can travel well over a kilometre in a single night, foraging as it goes. Solid fences, brick walls and gravel boards stop it in its tracks, which is why so many gardens become isolated islands. The fix is delightfully simple: create a gap roughly the size of a CD case — about 13 centimetres square — at ground level in every boundary.

• Timber fences: lift a gravel board or cut a neat notch out of the bottom edge of a panel.
• Brick walls: remove one or two bricks at the base, or leave a deliberate gap when repointing.
• Hedging: leave a section unpruned so there's a clear run at the base. A hedge with a small tunnel underneath is ideal.
• Gates and gates posts: a gap under a gate works just as well as a hole in a panel.

If you rent your home, it's worth asking your landlord first — most are happy once you explain that a small notch won't affect the fence's strength. Then talk to your neighbours. One gap is useful; a chain of gaps along the whole street turns a collection of gardens into a proper hedgehog highway.

Leave one corner genuinely wild

The tidiest gardens are the least useful for wildlife. Resist the urge to clear every leaf and strim every edge, and instead set aside a corner you simply leave alone. A metre or two of long grass, a pile of logs, a heap of fallen leaves and a few nettles will do more for hedgehogs than any amount of fancy planting.

Log piles in particular are brilliant: they shelter beetles, slugs and caterpillars, which are exactly what a hedgehog eats, and they offer somewhere cool and damp to rest during hot spells. A compost heap that you turn infrequently makes a snug daytime nest. Add some native planting — hawthorn, honeysuckle, wild roses, foxgloves, lavender — and you'll attract the insects that underpin the whole little ecosystem.

Bin the slug pellets and mind the hazards

Slug pellets are one of the most serious dangers a hedgehog faces in a garden. A hedgehog that eats a poisoned slug or snail, or the pellets themselves, can suffer slow and painful harm. Even where a product is marketed as wildlife-friendly, the safest approach is to let natural predators do the work: a resident hedgehog will hoover up slugs and snails quite happily on its own.

Other everyday hazards are worth a mental checklist:

• Strimmers and mowers: check long grass before cutting, especially in spring and early summer.
• Bonfires: build them on the day you plan to light them, and check the base thoroughly first — a heap of wood is an irresistible nest site.
• Netting and fruit cages: keep netting pegged up at least 30 centimetres above the ground so hedgehogs can't become tangled.
• Ponds: add a gently sloping ramp or a pile of stones at one edge so anything that falls in can climb out.
• Drains and steep-sided holes: cover them, or place a rough piece of wood inside as an escape route.

Offer food, water and somewhere to sleep

Hedgehogs are nocturnal foragers, so you'll rarely see them at work. You can help without making them dependent by putting out a small bowl of meaty cat or dog food — not fish-based, and never bread or milk, which makes them ill. A shallow dish of fresh water is arguably even more valuable, particularly in dry summers.

For shelter, a purpose-built hedgehog house placed in a quiet, shaded spot works well, but so does a simple pile of leaves under a shed or behind a shrub. Site the entrance facing away from prevailing wind and leave it undisturbed. In autumn, resist the urge to clear every leaf — a thick layer of leaf litter is a hibernation bed, not a mess.

Make it a neighbourhood effort

Hedgehogs don't recognise property boundaries, so the more people involved, the better it works. Mention the gaps to the households either side of you, and if you're part of a residents' group or allotment committee, suggest a street-wide approach. Even a handful of connected gardens creates a corridor that lets hedgehogs move safely between feeding grounds.

Once you start looking, the signs are easy to spot: small dark droppings full of beetle cases, a rustle in the border after dusk, a snuffling noise near the compost heap. A wild corner, a couple of gaps and a bowl of water really is all it takes — and a garden with a hedgehog in it is a garden that's working exactly as it should.