There is something quietly wonderful about a hedgehog shuffling across the lawn at dusk. It is also, increasingly, a rare sight. Britain's hedgehog population has fallen sharply in recent decades, and ordinary gardens have become one of their most important refuges. The catch is that no single garden is large enough to support a hedgehog on its own. They need to roam — and that means they need a way through your fence.

One Garden Is Never Enough

A hedgehog can cover a kilometre or more in a single night, moving between gardens in search of worms, beetles, slugs and safe places to sleep. A solid fence, a concrete gravel board or a brick wall stops that journey dead. Hedgehogs are good at finding a way in if one exists, but they cannot chew through timber, dig through concrete or climb a panel.

This is why wildlife gardeners talk about a "hedgehog highway": a series of small openings that link one garden to the next and turn a street of separate plots into one continuous habitat. Even a modest suburban street, joined up properly, can offer more foraging ground than a nature reserve.

Cut a Gap in the Boundary

The standard recommendation is a gap of 13 centimetres square — roughly the size of a CD case. That is comfortable for a hedgehog and narrow enough to discourage most dogs, though local cats will use it too.

• Cut a notch from the bottom corner of a fence panel, or remove a short length of gravel board.
• Lift two or three bricks from a garden wall and leave a tunnel beneath them.
• Where a boundary is rented or shared, ask first — most neighbours are happy once they know why.
• Aim for two gaps per garden so animals are never funnelled into a dead end.
• Keep gaps clear of leaves, soil and ivy, which quietly close them over a season.

A five-minute conversation with the people either side is often the most valuable thing you can do. Hedgehogs do not recognise property lines.

Remove the Hazards

A connected garden is only useful if it is safe. Most hedgehog injuries in gardens come from a handful of avoidable problems.

• Ponds and water butts: fit a gently sloping ramp or a pile of stones at one edge so a hog that falls in can climb out. Steep, straight-sided water is a death trap.
• Netting: keep fruit netting, pond netting and football nets 30 centimetres off the ground, and check them every morning.
• Slug pellets: avoid them entirely. They harm hedgehogs, birds and pets, and there are effective alternatives such as nematodes and beer traps.
• Strimmers and mowers: walk long grass and check borders before you cut. Hedgehogs sleep in exactly the places we like to tidy.
• Bonfires: build the pile on the day you intend to light it, or move it completely first. A sleeping hedgehog will not run.
• Drains and steep-sided holes: cover them, or give them an escape route.

Food and Water, Offered Sensibly

You do not need to feed hedgehogs, but a little supplementary food helps them build reserves before winter — particularly in dry summers when natural prey is scarce.

• Meat-based cat or dog food, chicken or turkey flavour, served in a shallow dish.
• Dried cat biscuits or specialist hedgehog food as a crunchier option.
• Fresh water every night, in a shallow bowl with a stone in it.

Never offer bread and milk, which causes serious digestive problems, and keep mealworms to an occasional treat rather than a staple. Feed after dusk and, if cats or foxes are a nuisance, use a covered feeding station with a narrow entrance.

Shelter and a Wild Corner

Hedgehogs need somewhere to sleep by day and to hibernate between roughly November and March. A tidy garden offers very little.

• Leave a log pile in a shady corner, with the wood stacked loosely.
• Keep a heap of fallen leaves behind a shrub — a perfect nest, free of charge.
• Let a patch of long grass stand through winter; mow it in spring, not autumn.
• Site a hedgehog house in a quiet, dry spot, entrance facing away from the prevailing wind.

Always check compost heaps, leaf piles and long grass before pushing a fork or strimmer into them. If you disturb a hibernating hedgehog, cover it back over gently and leave it be.

Gardens Beside Brooks and Streams

A garden that backs onto a brook is prime hedgehog territory. Damp ground is rich in earthworms, beetles and slugs, and hedgehogs will happily forage along a bank for hours. The danger is the water itself.

Steep-sided banks, stone revetments and vertical brick edges offer no foothold. If a hedgehog slips in, it will swim — but it can drown looking for a way out. Build in escape routes:

• Lay rough stones to create a shallow gravel beach at one point along the bank.
• Sink a roughened timber ramp at a gentle angle, secured so it cannot shift.
• Leave a buffer strip of rough, unmown grass between the lawn and the water's edge.
• Plant native marginals — meadowsweet, purple loosestrife, water mint — for cover and insects.
• Never use weedkiller or pesticide along the water margin, where runoff travels fastest.

Check water butts and drains near the brook regularly. If you see a hedgehog out in daylight, it is almost certainly unwell and needs a local wildlife rescue, not a bowl of food.

Do the small things — a gap here, a ramp there, a corner left untidy — and you become part of something bigger than your own boundary. Hedgehogs are still out there, quietly working the night shift. All they need is a way through.