How Hedgehogs Can Help Keep Your Garden Pest-Free This Autumn

The start of autumn marks many changes for our gardens, with more rain, a cold snap, fallen leaves, and hibernating plants to contend with.

Amidst this growing list of yard maintenance, green-fingered Brits should not overlook the importance of one of nature's best garden helpers, the hedgehog.

Gardening experts at Dino Decking have teamed up with The British Hedgehog Preservation Society to share six tips to support your local hedgehogs and benefit from their presence in your garden!

1. Create a hedgehog highway

Since hedgehogs are nocturnal animals, you may not be aware of their presence in your garden, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

Living in gardens and greenspaces right across the UK, these spiky animals are still foraging in October, travelling an impressive mile every night to search for food and mates.

To ensure hedgehogs can safely pass through your garden (clearing plant-eating grubs in their wake), create a hedgehog highway to link it with surrounding gardens and greenspaces.

Simply place 13cm by 13cm square gaps in your fence (these can be hidden near the back) to allow hedgehogs safe passage in and out of your garden.

2. Create natural food sources

Hedgehogs eat a variety of insects, worms and grubs, including pests that destroy the fruit, vegetables, blooms and greenery that you have painstakingly grown.

To entice these critter-eating creatures into your garden and ensure they have enough food, integrate some wildlife-friendly features into your space.

If you have not got one already, try setting up a compost heap. This will improve your soil quality and reduce pollution while creating a habitat for hedgehogs to enjoy.

Now is the perfect time to start your compost, ready for your post-Halloween pumpkins!

3. Provide refreshments

Once hedgehogs have gorged on your garden's bug buffet, they need hydrating. But fresh, ground-level water is often scarce, especially when the temperature drops and the ground is frozen.

Placing clean bowls of water in your garden will support the survival of foraging hedgehogs and keep them coming back into your space.

4. Keep a wild corner

For many, their garden is the pride and joy, with much time taken to keep it looking pristine, but a wild corner with unmown grass, unpruned leaves and logs is perfect for hedgehogs.

Unkempt space provides foraging, shelter and nesting opportunities for hedgehogs to hibernate as winter draws in. Beyond the colder months, a wild corner is perfect for keeping hedgehogs well-fed year-round.

5. Leave the leaves

Due to increasing manicured gardens, fences and walls in urban areas and intensive industrial farming with the overuse of pesticides in rural areas, hedgehog numbers have seen a worrying decline.

Hedgehogs were classed as vulnerable to extinction in 2020, with the difficulty of finding suitable places to live and enough food a leading cause.

But, all hope is not lost. A simple and easy way that you can help hedgehogs this autumn is to leave fallen leaves in your garden.

Leaving fallen leaves, rather than getting rid of them, will not only provide materials for hedgehogs to build their hibernation nests, but play host to a bug feast of prey as well.

6. Do not listen to the old wives' tales

Are you scared to invite hedgehogs into your garden in case they give your pets fleas? Don’t be. It is a common misconception that all hedgehogs carry fleas. Many don’t, and hedgehog fleas are host-specific , meaning that while they may jump onto a cat or dog, they won’t infest them.