Hedgehogs Awareness Week

Hello again, Dear Readers,

This week is Hedgehog Awareness Week! 3rd - 9th May

Following on from the comment by the amazing Josie on my post "Tulips and more" where Josie commented on how she hoped we might get a family of hedgehogs making a home here, she gave a link to an article in The Telegraph which explains the sad reasons why hedgehogs will be extinct within the next 15 years.

Here is a list of ideas of things gardeners can do to help hedgehogs, taken from the website of the British Hedgehog Preservation Society:

• Ensure there is access into the garden (5" gaps are all that is needed)
• Check areas before strimming and mowing
• Moving piles of rubbish to a new site before burning it
• Ensuring netting is kept at a safe height
• Checking compost heaps before digging the fork in
• Stopping or reducing the amount of pesticides and poisons used
• Covering drains or deep holes
• Ensuring there is an easy route out of ponds and pools

The society are asking everyone to pledge to do something positive to help during the week. 

I've recently noticed our wonderful neighbours have installed what appears to be a hedgehog house in a wild corner at the bottom of their garden.  We've not had a chance to speak to them as they work long hours, let's hope they have seen a hedgehog, and hence that was the reason for the hedgehog house.

With further regard to the wildlife department, my husband recently dug up and carefully reseeded a bald patch of lawn under our apple tree and kept the area well watered, waiting for the grass to grow, but just lately we've been going out every morning and finding its all been very thoroughly dug up again, to a depth of about 4-6 inches, including big chunks of chalk which were below the topsoil, we can only imagine this is the work of Billy Badger and his family looking for earthworms which we understand is part of their diet.   We used to see the badgers regularly in the garden and have even seen them with their young, but have not seen them now for a year or two.  I now understand badgers and hedgehogs don't mix as the badgers are the predator, but we are happy to see the badgers even though it means we probably won't see hedgehogs!

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Join me again soon when my next post will have pictures of my latest finish.

Barbara xx