Hedgehog Awareness Week is happening now until 11 May. The annual event highlights the problems hedgehogs face and how you can help them.

Hedgehogs are a great indicator species – they don’t need an awful lot to survive, so if they are not coping well, it means the habitat is deficient – and should ring alarm bells for other species, including humans.

Luckily, our garden centre is stocked up with lots of goods to help keep hedgehogs safe such as hedgehog food, plus hedgehog houses and cute hedgehog woodwork items to decorate your garden with, made by our students with learning disabilities in their woodwork session.

So, how can you help a hedgehog?

• Make sure you have a 13cm x 13cm square gap in the bottom of boundary walls and fences so that hedgehogs can come and go.
• Create log piles and piles of leaves and leave corners and edges to grow wild offering shelter for hedgehogs and attracting natural food for them.
• Leave out several clean bowls of water (not milk!) with a few pebbles so that butterflies and bees can drink too.
• If you have a pond make sure there is a sloping edge, ramp or a half submerged rock so animals can get out.
• Don’t use pesticides or poisons which could harm wildlife.
• Put sports nets away. Raise garden netting to 30cm off the ground so that hedgehogs can safely go underneath it.
• Check bonfires for hedgehogs before lighting them and check lawns for wildlife before you mow.
• Always remove litter- it can be deadly for wildlife.

Visit our garden centre and enquire for more information – we’re open until 4pm every day.