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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Alys Fowler

Ditch power tools, build a hedgehog highway: how to create a nature-friendly garden

European robin with food in its beak, perched in a UK hawthorn hedge
Everyone (including the birds and the bees) benefits when you garden with wildlife in mind. Photograph: PaulMaguire/Getty Images/iStockphoto

It’s happening: spring’s stretching and greenness, vibrant and achingly alive. But the last thing your garden needs is to be tidied up in a rush, for soil to be cleared of debris, for rotten, grey, dead and dying bits to be whisked away. For it’s these bits that hold all the life.

So many small things – overwinter insects, larvae, pupae and eggs – are still sleeping or waiting for just a few more warmer days. In our attempt to spruce things up, we often whisk away their homes in hollow stems and under layers of autumn leaves, and then wonder where the birds have gone.

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