A Gardener's Best Friend, With a Perilous Night Shift

Few sights lift the heart like a hedgehog trundling across the lawn at dusk. They are the gardener's ally, hoovering up slugs, beetles and caterpillars, and a single hog can cover a mile or more in one night's foraging. That journey takes it through hedges, fences, driveways and a dozen neighbouring gardens — and almost every obstacle it meets was put there by us.

Hedgehog numbers have fallen dramatically in recent decades, so a garden that is genuinely safe is worth more than it might look. The good news is that the fixes are small, cheap and usually take minutes. Here are the ones that matter most.

Check Before You Strim, Mow or Fork

A hedgehog asleep in long grass looks uncannily like a tussock of dead leaves, which is exactly why strimmers cause so many terrible injuries. They shelter by day in exactly the places we tend to tidy — long grass, nettle patches, piles of leaves, the base of a hedge. A two-minute walk-round before you start is all it takes.

• Walk the area you intend to cut, and walk it again after you have moved anything.
• Work from the middle outwards, so anything hiding has an escape route rather than being trapped in a shrinking circle.
• Never leave a strimmer, mower or brushcutter running on the ground while you step away.
• Fork compost heaps and leaf piles gently. Hedgehogs hibernate in them, and a fork driven in hard does real damage.
• Roll up fruit netting, pea netting and sports nets when they are not in use — hedgehogs become badly tangled and rarely escape unaided.
• If you are building a bonfire, move the whole pile to a fresh spot on the day you light it.

Cover Drains and Make Ponds Escape-Proof

Open gullies, inspection chambers and steep-sided drains are classic hedgehog traps. A hog that tumbles in cannot climb the smooth sides and will not be found in time.

• Fit a grate or a sheet of sturdy mesh over any open drain, soakaway or light well.
• Check roadside gullies near your boundary, and lift anything that has fallen in.
• Give ponds a shallow beach, a sloping stone or a piece of secured chicken wire at one corner so hedgehogs and other wildlife can climb out.
• Keep lids on water butts, bins and wheelbarrows left out overnight.
• Store tins, cans and plastic ring holders in a closed bin — heads get stuck in them.

Leave Shallow Water Bowls Out at Night

A hedgehog on a warm, dry night can become badly dehydrated, and a steep-sided bowl is a drowning hazard rather than a drink. The answer is a shallow dish, no more than two or three centimetres deep, with a few clean pebbles or a sloping stone inside so a small animal can climb out easily.

• Use a saucer or a shallow plant dish rather than a deep bowl.
• Add pebbles or a gentle ramp as an escape route.
• Refresh the water daily, and twice over in a heatwave.
• Sink it to ground level near a hedge or border, where hogs feel safe approaching.
• If you feed as well, offer meat-based dog or cat food and plain water. Never milk or bread — hedgehogs cannot digest lactose and it makes them ill.

Bin the Slug Pellets and Other Poisons

Hedgehogs eat the very creatures that slug pellets are designed to kill, and they pick up poisoned slugs and the pellets themselves. Metaldehyde-based pellets are no longer approved for outdoor use in the UK, but other products can still cause harm, and the safest rule is simply not to use them.

• Control slugs with barriers, hand-picking at dusk, or a covered trap that wildlife cannot reach into.
• Store antifreeze, paints, weedkillers and pesticides locked away — antifreeze is sweet-tasting and lethal.
• Keep rodent bait inside secure boxes, never loose on the ground.
• Think twice about weed-and-feed treatments on a lawn where hedgehogs forage.

Join Your Garden to the One Next Door

A hedgehog needs to roam to find enough food, and a solid fence stops it dead. A gap roughly the size of a CD case — about 13 centimetres square — cut at the base of a fence panel, or a little tunnel under a gate, creates a hedgehog highway that connects your plot to the wider neighbourhood. Once the route exists, the rest is about giving them somewhere to rest.

• Leave one wild corner: a log pile, a leaf heap, a patch of long grass left uncut until spring.
• Put up a hedgehog house in a quiet, dry spot, facing away from the prevailing wind.
• Plant native hedging rather than putting up another solid panel.
• Keep a shallow water bowl topped up all year, not just in summer.

None of this requires a rewilded acre. A gap in a fence, a saucer of water and a moment's care before you start the strimmer will do more for these animals than almost anything else you could plant. Do a few of them, tell a neighbour, and the hogs will find their way to you.