Cottage garden wildlife
Two of our regular fox diners
As well as regular fox diners, we now have a cottage garden hedgehog to add to the mix of creatures feeling at home here.
This cottage garden style is a lovely jumble of growth in summer and I love to see wildlife of all kinds. I wrote about the reality of having creatures in your garden here and how I put up with pigeons, squirrels, parakeets, magpies and the rest in order to have the nice ones too like birds, mice, newts, frogs and foxes. Feeding and caring for the creatures we share the garden with are a big part of the daily joy of having a garden at all.
A hedgehog arrives
I could hardly believe my eyes when one evening a month ago I saw a hedgehog eating the plate of dog food I’d left out for the foxes.
We’d had a hedgehog about 6 years ago but not a sight of one since. They are rare and endangered and I wasn’t expecting to see one again.
There it was munching its way across the plate of Chum.
Our new hedgehog
Hedgehog clock
He? She? has been coming every evening for weeks now at around dusk at 9.30pm almost precisely. It must be waiting nearby because it starts munching within minutes of my putting the plate out. I now put out two plates, one for hedgehog and one for the foxes.
Reading about them, they have a round trip they make every night visiting 20 houses and apparently they know exactly where they are going. It’s so vital that we leave a gap in our boundaries for them to get through. They sleep during the day in dry piles of leaves or garden waste.
Hedgehog hideaways
This messy style of garden has more holes than fence, with the greenery holding the bits of fence up rather than the other way around. There must be so many cosy undisturbed little places for a hedgehog to hide out in. That’s one of the things I love about having a garden to try and attract and encourage wildlife.
Some hardy geranium plants came from the wonderful Cranesbill nursery and they were packed in straw
Straw for a hedgehog bed
which I pushed into a space at the back of the border
A cosy corner
A lovely little habitat.
Hedgehog snack
Emergency meeting – hedgehog alert
These guys don’t bother me now. I’m ashamed to tell you what I used to do with them so I won’t.
Hedgehogs eat slugs – all part of the cycle. Not much I could do about them anyway even if I wanted to.
Family group
Feral cat watching our cat watching hedgehog
Feral cat watching our cat watching the hedgehog. Everyone rubs along fine. Cats and hedgehogs don’t seem to mind each other at all. Foxes seem fine with it all too. Seeing as I feed them all I guess they know what’s good for them.
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Julie
adore your garden and attitude toward all the wildlife. i am on the west coast usa, eugene, oregon. above california. no hedgehogs here, but everything else in my courtyard garden and adjoining overgrown alley, the little feral cat colony, possums, raccoons, the squirrels and birds i feed every day, and inside my cottage my high maintenance close to 15 year old pittie dog, Nana the magnificent.
thank you for your writings reminding me that we can have a little paradise on our properties. i feel so blessed.
marti black
Thanks for your lovely message Marti and how exciting to be connected to you so far away by our love of wildlife. Question. Do possums actually ever “play possum”? Are raccoons as stripes as they are in photos? Best wishes and Thankyou for writing,
Julie, love your hedgehog and I hope my slugs attract a hedgehog too!
Hi. I’d be surprised if you didn’t have a hedgehog visiting your lovely wild garden but now it gets dark earlier they’re harder to see. We feel lucky to have him, or maybe her.
Terrific picture of the wild cat watching your cat watching the hedgehog! Extraordinarily! Well done
Ah thanks pal. Little creatures do bring a lot of joy.
Happy summer to you! I look forward to finding you in my inbox. I so enjoy seeing the photos of your lovely cottage garden and reading your delightful posts!
Thankyou so much Janet, it really cheers me up to find people are finding and enjoying my blogs. I do love sharing my garden. Best wishes.
You have a lovely garden made even more lovely by hedgehogs. We don’t have hedgehogs in Canada, too cold! But we do have skunks, ground hogs, and raccoons.
Thankyou so much Stephen. I didn’t know hedgehogs can’t live in very cold places. We are so temperate here. Different weather every day. You can never plan much. Best wishes and Thankyou for reading.
How fun that they all get along. Humans could learn a few lessons from them.
Thanks Beverley.
I love this latest post! A heartwarming read, thank you!
Thankyou so much Nikki. Your comment makes it all worthwhile. Best wishes.
Love that last picture!
Oh Thankyou so much. It was a lucky pic wasn’t it. They all seem unfazed by each other which is good. Best wishes.
Wildlife adds greatly to our enjoyment of the garden. Ours is a rural garden so foxes and badgers are regulars but hedgehogs are very rarely seen though I have no doubt they must be around somewhere. My absolute favourite here is our resident family of stoats which live in a boundary ditch and have kept our garden rabbit free for years and years. Of the birds, pheasants are semi-domesticated – they stand on a wall outside the kitchen window and call for their food!
Oh how lovely. I’ve never seen a stoat. Don’t they move incredibly fast?? You’re right, wildlife is a huge part of a garden. I’m watching birds on my four feeders as I write. Best wishes.