Meet the Hedgehog Champions: James & Liz from Stirlingshire
4th May 2020
Hedgehog Awareness Week Day 2
James and Liz live up in Stirlingshire in Scotland and have been Hedgehog Champions for around a year. After having so many wonderful experiences of seeing hedgehogs when they were children, as adults the wanted to do their bit to make sure future generations get the same experiences they did.
Not a Hedgehog Champion yet? You can sign up HERE.
Hedgehogs are so charismatic; it is hard not to fall in love with them and want to help make ‘your’ hedgehog’s patch that little bit better for them. As soon as we moved into our first home and saw our first hedgehog we immediately went to report our sighting on the Big Hedgehog Map.
James and Liz have been working to make their suburban garden hedgehog-friendly as well as a haven for other wildlife too, as Liz explains…
It was when I read through the various website pages I realised what Hedgehog Street staff and volunteers were achieving that I wanted to get involved. Our garden already had many gaps below our fence when we moved in and knowing that our neighbours saw them too, it was nice to know that hedgehogs had good easy access to different gardens.
For us it was all about making sure we maintained our garden in such a way that there was a bounty of natural food and places for hedgehogs to rest and hopefully hibernate! We have areas of the garden that are ‘wild’ and we have a log pile.
For Christmas we asked our family for a hedgehog home. Only for my Dad to make one himself based on Hedgehog Street’s guidance. We have so much more planned, with new fencing going in (the wind won out eventually!) where we will make sure the same gaps are left. We also plan to replace some of the fencing for hedgerow, put in a hedgehog friendly pond, and improve the hedgehog home to make it a bit more cozy.
Hedgehogs are so charismatic! I love nothing more than watching them snuffle about in search of food.
You can find lots of information on the Hedgehog Street website for making your garden hedgehog friendly, just like James and Liz have done!
