This morning I joined Jean and Richard on a neighbour visit as they connected four gardens together with one of our core drills. It was a little cold and drizzly, but the weather didn’t put off this hardy bunch and it was a lovely morning meeting a group of neighbours that have come together for this common cause. From the advice of our brilliant champions, neighbours Liz and John have also built a hedgehog house in a quiet area of their garden, and they will be gradually building it up with logs and leaves over the winter, with hopes of a tenant next year.
Jean and Richard first became captured by the charm of our prickly friends when they discovered a nest of hoglets in their garden earlier in the year. Keenly keeping a watchful eye over the nest, they admired from afar as the babies grew up and eventually left the mother to fend for themselves. Since then they have been visiting their neighbours gardens to give tips and advice, and to give them a helping hand! They've found that many gardens already had inadvertent hedgehog-sized gaps in their garden boundaries, and some neighbours were happy to make a hole themselves. For those that didn't have the tools or confidence to get out themselves, our champions have using our drilling kit to make the hedgehog holes and create a Hedgehog Highway along the street, one drilled hole at a time! They have linked around 10 gardens with the drills already and now that they have finished delivering invites to all of their neighbours, hope to link more in the coming months. Fab work!
For more information about our hedgehog work in Suffolk head here, and our Ipswich project here. Tips to encourage hedgehogs in your garden can be found here, and for more information about becoming a hedgehog champion, head here. Learn more about the Hedgehog Street approach here. We are always on the look out for drilling volunteers so let us know if you would like to lend your tool skills to the hedgehog cause, or if you have a group of neighbours in Ipswich keen to create a hedgehog highway, but without the tools to do so – we may be able to help!
