Attracting Hedgehogs to a Suburban Garden

Why Hedgehogs Need Our Help

Hedgehogs were once a familiar sight on warm evenings, snuffling through the flowerbeds and rustling under the shrubs. These days, spotting one feels like a small event worth telling the neighbours about. Britain's hedgehog population has fallen sharply over recent decades, and the reasons are mostly ordinary ones: tidy gardens, sealed fences, busy roads and a shortage of the beetles, caterpillars and slugs that make up their natural diet.

The good news is that suburban gardens are genuinely valuable. A well-planted back garden can offer shelter, food and safe passage, and because hedgehogs roam widely at night, the way your garden connects to the ones around it matters just as much as what you plant in it. A hedgehog might travel a mile or more in a single night, so think of your plot as one link in a longer chain.

Open Up Your Boundaries

The single most useful thing you can do for hedgehogs is to let them in. A hedgehog cannot climb a fence or squeeze under a well-fitted gate, but it will happily use a gap the size of a CD case – roughly 13 centimetres square. That is small enough to keep dogs and toddlers where they belong, and large enough for a hedgehog to pass through comfortably.

Have a wander around your boundaries and look for opportunities:

• Cut a small arch at the base of a wooden fence panel, then sand the edges smooth and treat the cut timber.
• Lift a brick or two from the bottom of a garden wall, leaving a neat little doorway.
• Dig a shallow channel under a gate or gravel board – hedgehogs prefer ground level to clambering.
• Talk to your neighbours. A gap is only useful if it leads somewhere, so a few households joining up can create a genuine hedgehog highway along the terrace.

If you keep chickens or rabbits, make sure any gap in their enclosure is above ground level or lined with mesh, so a hedgehog cannot wander in and get trapped.

Water, Always Water

Hedgehogs are thirsty animals, especially in dry summers, and they are not built to drink from a bird bath or a steep-sided pond. A shallow dish of fresh water at ground level is one of the kindest things you can offer. Use a saucer or a plant-pot base no deeper than about four centimetres, and add a few pebbles so a small hedgehog can climb out if it slips in.

Keep it topped up through the evening, when hedgehogs are most active, and place it somewhere quiet – beside a shrub or under a hedge rather than in the middle of a lawn where cats congregate. If you have a pond, make sure at least one edge has a gentle slope or a ramp of stones so that any animal that falls in can climb back out. Drowning in garden ponds is a real and preventable danger.

Food, and What to Avoid

A hedgehog's ideal meal is a beetle, a caterpillar, an earthworm or a slug, and a wildlife-friendly garden will supply plenty. Leave a corner of the garden a little rough – long grass, leaf litter, log piles and undisturbed soil are all larders. Chemical slug pellets, however, are lethal. A hedgehog that eats a poisoned slug or the pellet itself can die a slow and painful death, and the same goes for other wildlife. If slugs are a problem, use barriers, beer traps or simply accept a few holes in the hostas.

If you want to offer supplementary food, put out tinned dog or cat food in jelly, or a proprietary hedgehog food, in a shallow dish. Never give them bread and milk – hedgehogs are lactose intolerant, and bread fills them up without feeding them properly. Mealworms are fine as an occasional treat but should not form the bulk of the diet, as they are low in calcium.

Shelter and Nesting Places

By day, a hedgehog needs somewhere dark, dry and undisturbed to sleep. A simple wooden hedgehog house, placed in a quiet corner with the entrance facing away from prevailing wind, will often be used – though a well-built pile of logs and leaves can work just as well. Avoid the temptation to tidy it up.

Autumn is a critical time. Hedgehogs need to build up fat reserves before hibernation, and a bonfire heap is a tempting place to sleep. Always check and move a pile of sticks and leaves before lighting it, and ideally rebuild the bonfire on the day you intend to burn it. If you disturb a hibernating hedgehog, cover it back over gently and leave it be.

Keeping the Garden Safe

A hedgehog-friendly garden is mostly about avoiding accidents. Strimmers and mowers cause terrible injuries, so check long grass before you cut. Netting designed to keep birds off fruit can entangle hedgehogs – use a mesh size of at least five centimetres, or peg it firmly to the ground. Ponds, drains and steep-sided cattle grids all need an escape route.

Keep an eye out too for hedgehogs that are active in daylight, which is usually a sign of illness or hunger. If you find one in trouble, contact a local wildlife rescue for advice. Otherwise, the best thing you can do is simple: leave a gap, put down a dish of water, skip the pellets, and let the garden grow a little wilder at the edges. Do that, and one evening you may hear that unmistakable rustle in the border – a small, spiny neighbour quietly making itself at home.