Page 11 - Natural World Spring 2018

revolution
be barriers or highways. It just depends how you look at them, says Hugh Warwick

to conservation and working with Remember the lines that link need Street campaign. It’s hugely
partners across the board can bring not be straightforward, they can be important, as a foraging hedgehog
about huge changes: we can truly pearls along a necklace. can cover more than a mile per night.
have living landscapes once again.
Make sure you have spaces wild Making lines work for us and
And we can take action ourselves. enough in your garden to let insects for wildlife is a great way to start
Look to the patches you can thrive. Of course, there is far more redressing some of the damage we
influence; for many of us that is our out there than just things that fly, and have inadvertently caused. Why not
gardens. The best way to fit them we need to make provision for them begin with your garden or workplace,
into a living landscape is by making as well. And that is where a little looking at how you can open up
connections, at different levels. The engineering can be very useful – a highways or create stop-off points
most obvious is to supply nectar rich hole in the fence, just 13cm square, to for your local plants and animals?
plants to attract insects – which in let the terrestrial beasts join the fun. And if you can get your neighbours
turn feed birds, bats and amphibians. This is the essence of the Hedgehog involved, better still.

Frogs will travel several
hundred yards if your
pond smells good

How you can help

Plug your garden
into the linescape

We tend to think our gardens stop
at the fence, but wildlife doesn’t.

Log piles

Encourage invertebrates to
colonise in the damp, dark corners

Ponds

Attract highly mobile dragonflies
and draw in frogs, newts and
toads to spawn

Hedgehog holes

Give our prickly friends the right to
roam through your garden

Messy corners

Long grasses and wildflowers give
insects a home, attracting bats

Window boxes

Even if you don’t have a garden, a
vibrant window box is a great
wildlife habitat

spring 2018 NATURAL WORLD 11