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Step 3: Make a Small Change

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Above - Unknown Source 

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The third step is to commit to a small change in your own garden or in own behaviours to help the local hedgehogs thrive. The more wildlife friendly are gardens are, the more hedgehog friendly they are.

 

Some gardens additions to think about include: leaving a wild patch in your gardening add a log pile or deadwood habitat / and shrubs / wild flowers; add a compost heap. You could get the kids involved in making wildlife specific enhancements such as: hedgehog houses and feeding stations; bee boxes and bug hotels, feeding the birds; making a stone pile; and maybe adding a pond or planting a mini meadow! Something as simple as adding a ground water bowl would be valuable as many hedgehogs suffer from limited access to water and therefore fall foul of dehydration. 

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You could also think about maybe changing a garden behaviour? For example, check the long grass before strimming, and the log piles before lighting bonfires. Fill in any holes in the garden that may be damaging to wandering hogs and clean up litter and netting that could prove a danger. Most crucially, perhaps, you could consider switching away from insecticides and pesticides for managing garden pests and instead encourage the gardeners best friend - the hedgehog - to help clear your garden of slugs and bugs? Did you know the average adult hedgehog can scoff 200g of insects in a single night!

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Of course, not many of us have a garden that looks like the above, and neither do we need to. If we all made a small change then the environment for our hedgehogs and supporting wildlife would thrive. 

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