It’s Hedgehog Awareness Week this week, and we are delighted to introduce our new partner, The Handyman Station. Founded and managed by local resident Jeremy Lewis-Phillips, The Handyman Station offers a range of property maintenance services from electrical and plumbing to gardening. Some of their fully insured handypeople use electric cargo bikes instead of vans, getting their team and materials delivering efficiently via bike lanes, with no parking restrictions or congestion charges.

Jeremy and his team will be donating their time and skills to our Barnes Hedgehogs project by carrying out the hole cutting that connects local gardens to the Hedgehog Highway. These connections are vital in enlarging the habitat of local hedgehogs, and ensuring that they can freely roam our local gardens and alleyways, eating all the slugs and snails they can find.

We already have a network of gardens across Barnes, so why not add yours to it! We would love to get everyone involved so please book your hedgehog hole cutting appointment today.

The next available dates are:

• Monday 16 June
• Thursday 10 July

Book via Eventbrite.

You can help your local hedgehogs by trying these wildlife-friendly ways suggested by the British Hedgehog Preservation Society:

• Let the edges grow wild! Log piles, leaf heaps, and wild edges attract natural food and offer shelter for hedgehogs. Always carefully check for wildlife before mowing, strimming or tidying wild areas.
• Add Hedgehog highways! These 13cm x 13cm (or for those of you old enough to remember, CD-sized) gaps in the base of boundary walls and fences ensure hedgehogs can access vital habitat. Once made, log them on the Big Hedgehog Map.
• Make ponds safe! Ponds are great for wildlife but ensure there are escape routes – add sloping edges, ramps or half-submerged rocks so hedgehogs can scramble out.
• Look out for litter! Litter is very harmful to wildlife, and while it’s hopefully not an issue in your own garden, it’s likely to be in the wider environment. Contact landowners where litter is a problem; remember to point out the danger to wildlife.
• Water is vital for all wildlife and can be scarce, especially during hot spells. Make sure there are always clean shallow bowls of water available for hedgehogs – add a few pebbles for bees and butterflies to perch on so they can safely drink too.
• Stop using poisons and pesticides that could directly harm wildlife and destroy the food chain.
• Netting can become entangled in hedgehog spines: make sure sports nets are put away and garden netting is raised 30cm off the ground so hedgehogs can safely pass under.