Get Your Garden Winter Ready

Cheshire Wildlife Trust’s Pippa Neill explains ways to keep wildlife flourishing in your garden during the colder months

With summer drawing to a close, I find myself longing for a few more of those glorious long, warm summer evenings spent in my garden. But as the days get shorter and the weather colder, it is an important time to make sure all species, including we humans, can continue to enjoy the garden. There are five simple ways you can do this during September that will keep your garden looking as great and alive with wildlife as it is in the summer.

1. Hedgehog populations in the UK have declined by more than half since 2000, so it’s important we encourage their presence in a safe and warm spot in our gardens. Autumn is their hibernation period, that time when they search for that place to go into a long, relaxing sleep for the winter. It’s also a dangerous period for them, too, with many making the critical mistake of resting in unlit bonfires or piles of leaves that will soon be swept away.

One way to prevent this is by making a hedgehog house – you can find a step-by-step guide on how to do this on the Cheshire Wildlife Trust website – or you can purchase a pre-built house from your local garden centre. Choose a shady spot in your garden for the hedgehogs to find.