Hedgehogs are among the most welcome visitors to a British garden, and among the most vulnerable. Their numbers have fallen sharply in recent decades, and the causes are mostly quiet ones: sealed fences, paved front gardens, slug pellets and the loss of the rough, scruffy corners where they find food and shelter. A wildflower meadow garden managed with a little thought can be genuinely important habitat. Here is how to make yours a safer, richer place for hedgehogs — and for the beetles, frogs and moths that share their world.

Hedgehog highways: the simplest fix of all

A hedgehog may travel over a mile in a single night, foraging across a whole neighbourhood. A solid fence line stops it dead. The remedy takes ten minutes and costs nothing: cut a gap roughly 13cm (5in) square at the base of each fence panel, or lift a panel slightly and sit it on a couple of bricks. This is what wildlife groups call a hedgehog highway, and it works best when neighbours join in.

• Make the gap 13cm by 13cm — big enough for a hedgehog, too small for most pets.
• Position it where the ground is level on both sides, near a hedge, border or shed so it feels sheltered.
• Check for gravel boards and concrete footings, which often need cutting rather than lifting.
• Knock on a few doors and explain the idea. Three or four linked gardens become a genuine corridor.

Shelter: log piles, leaves and a place to hibernate

Hedgehogs sleep by day in tangled, dry, undisturbed places, and hibernate from roughly November to March. A tidy garden offers them almost nothing. A log pile in a shady corner, built loosely with the bark left on and a few handfuls of dry leaves tucked into the gaps, is ideal — and it will also shelter beetles, frogs and slow worms.

• Stack logs loosely rather than tightly; leave the bottom layer in contact with damp soil.
• Leave a corner of the meadow uncut through winter, with seed heads and hollow stems standing.
• Let a compost heap or a pile of prunings settle for a season — both are classic nesting sites.
• Site any hedgehog box in a quiet, dry spot with the entrance tunnel facing away from the prevailing wind.

Once a pile or box is occupied, leave it alone. Disturbing a hibernating hedgehog can be fatal, so if you must move one, wait until spring.

Cut out the chemicals

Pesticides harm hedgehogs in two ways. Some, particularly slug pellets containing metaldehyde, are directly toxic. Others kill the slugs, beetles and caterpillars that make up most of a hedgehog's diet, so the garden becomes a larder with nothing in it. Even a modest nightly foraging route needs a steady supply of invertebrates.

In a meadow garden you can afford to be relaxed. Encourage natural predators such as frogs, toads, ground beetles and birds. Use nematode products for slugs in vulnerable beds, barrier tapes and copper around pots, and hand-pick after rain. Weedkillers are worth avoiding too, since they remove the broad-leaved plants — clover, bird's-foot trefoil, knapweed — that feed the insects everything else depends on.

Water, ponds and hidden hazards

Hedgehogs swim well but cannot climb steep, smooth-sided banks, and garden ponds claim a surprising number of them each year. A gently sloping stone, a piece of roughened timber or a length of plastic-coated wire mesh draped over the edge gives them a way out. A shallow dish of fresh water at ground level is appreciated in dry spells and costs nothing to maintain.

Other hazards are easy to overlook. Fruit netting and sports netting tangle hedgehogs badly, so keep it pegged at least 30cm above the ground. Cover open drains and light wells. Check long grass before strimming. And always, always walk a bonfire pile before lighting it, moving the material to a fresh spot first.

Mowing a meadow with wildlife in mind

The strimmer is the single most dangerous tool in a wildlife garden. Hedgehogs rest in long grass during the day, so never cut a meadow you have not walked through first, and cut in daylight when you can see what you are doing. Adopt a mosaic approach: take one third of the meadow each year, leaving the rest long, and always leave a rough margin along hedges and fences as a refuge.

• Set the mower or strimmer high for the first pass — around 10cm — to give anything hidden a chance to move.
• Work from the centre outwards, or from one end to the other, so creatures are driven towards cover rather than trapped.
• Rake off cuttings after a few days so the sward stays open and wildflowers can set seed.

None of this requires a wild, unmanaged plot. A meadow with a log pile, a gap in the fence and a pond with a ramp is a beautifully tended thing — and a hedgehog will find it within a night or two of discovering the entrance.