A Prickly Issue

A Familiar Visitor

Our gardens are havens for us but how much of a haven are they for wildlife? Many people will plant flowers for bees and butterflies and put out nest boxes and food for birds. The most attractive and visible visitors are well catered for which is really good because despite gardeners best efforts many species of birds and insects are still in decline. One of the most dramatic declines in recent years is not a bird or insect but a mammal, the hedgehog. With numbers in decline for many years, down by 1/3 from 2003 – 2012 alone. Its decline is put down to various factors such as habitat loss, poor management of hedgerows, and the fragmentation of habitat because of building developments and new roads isolating any hedgehogs in the vicinity. Even the sad sight of a squashed hedgehog on the road has become less frequent. In an effort to help them people are taking action. One initiative from the British Hedgehog Preservation Society is called Hedgehog Street (www.hedgehogstreet.org) which offers advice on helping hedgehogs, including linking gardens by making a small hole at the bottom of a wall or fence to help them get around. There is much that we gardeners can do to encourage these visitors back to our gardens such as providing shelters for them to hibernate in and ensuring there is a good supply of food for them.

We want more of these!

In contrary to a gardeners natural instinct we should be encouraging slugs and snails to help our prickly friends (and others). Every gardener know how difficult these pests are to get rid of, they like damp dark areas to hide in, so keep a damp dark area just for them. To protect plants from their voracious appetites sacrificial plants or crops could be sown (Lettuce seeds are still very cheap). Vegetable crops can be protected in various ways, lots of different things can be used a barriers eg; soot, wood ash, egg shells, plastic bottle cloches etc. The one thing I would never use are slug pellets. The widely available ones which contain Metaldehyde may not have been proved to directly kill hedgehogs (some hedgehog charities would disagree there) research suggests that they would have to eat a large amount of pellets or dead slugs to kill them but it may act like rat poison and prevents them from breeding successfully. Slug Killers containing Aluminium Sulphate are deemed to be safe to use by Hedgehog charities. The preferred methods of despatching these slimy pests are using a beer trap or picking off and disposing of or putting down a hollow grapefruit half to shelter the slugs so they can be disposed of.

Another Gardeners Friend

The good thing about making a garden hedgehog friendly is that other slug and snail predators such as frogs, toads, centipedes, ground beetles, sloworms and fireflies will also be happy to visit your garden, particularly if you also provide suitable habitats for them too. So keep piles of leaves and old wood, create a beetle bank, make a small pond, use bundles of short pieces of cane to make homes for ladybirds and lacewings and use chemicals sparingly. Growing early or late flowering plants will help insects preparing for or emerging from hibernation. It is worth leaving some seeds and fruits where they are growing for the birds to enjoy, a pile of windfall apples is welcomed by blackbirds, thrushes and insects.

Add all these to the bird feeders and wildlife friendly plants and maybe if enough people do it there will be a turn around in the fortunes of our garden wildlife.

Rural vandalism

One final thought – I saw that the local farmer had been trimming the hedgerows around here. I know that there are miles and miles of hedges to trim and farmers are very busy people and need to do things in the most time and cost effective way. But is this sort of vandalism really necessary?! Imagine if we did the same in our gardens!