We spent a happy hour or two a few weeks back making some winter accommodation for our beneficial insect buddies (here) and worried (a little) that we were probably indulging ourselves rather more than the insects.

Then last week BBC breakfast news featured a story about plagues of ladybirds infesting houses around the UK, suggesting our doubts were well founded – these guys are clearly well able to get by without our help.

And then, as if to underline our folly, we read in the Guardian that we should have spent our time making a hedgehog house.

Can it really be true that Hedgehogs could be extinct in the UK by 2025??

We googled around a bit, and there are lots and lots of people doing all sorts of good work to nurture the hedgehog population.  One rescue centre had a “sorry, we’re full” sign on their (virtual) door.   There seemed to be hedgehogs, and hedgehog rescuers, everywhere.   There might even be unemployed hog-fanciers wandering the country roads at night, searching for homeless hogs to re-house….surely animals with so many people looking out for them can’t be endangered?

But what if they are?   Hedgehogs are (a) lovable cuddly Mrs Tiggywinkle looky-likeys who (b) eat lots of things which would otherwise be eating our plants.   They need to be saved!   And just in case there aren’t as many hogs or hog-lovers out there as we imagine, we’ve done our bit and added a hog-house to the Barlow Nurseries wildlife motel complex.

All you need is an old pallet, a jig saw, hammer, nails, a bit of polythene, a couple of old paving slabs, some cosy dry straw or leaves, a couple of spare hours, and a desire to save Beatrix Potter’s heritage….

Take one old pallet....

After an hour or so we had the basic shape

Baffled entrance to keep slumbering hog safe from predators

Sitting on a paving slab for insulation from cold and damp, and with a supply of leaf litter bedding

Old compost bag to keep the rain out, paving slab for strength

Finished house buried under layers of twigs, moss, and leaf litter for insulation

All we need now is a hedgehog.

We know they’re in the neighbourhood because they leave “evidence” around the nursery – but where do they live? Will they prefer our precision engineered hog friendly design to their current housing? Will more hogs turn up now there’s more accommodation?

Watch this space!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 19:28 and is filed under General gardening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.