Homes for hedgehogs - Nature recovery networks

Creating this network is not something we can do alone. We need to work with our peers, partners, communities, farmers and landowners to develop positive ‘restoration pathways’ and identify key actions that can be used to improve habitat connectivity and create space for nature. Land of any size can contribute to the Nature Recovery Network – nature reserves, community spaces, gardens, farms, parks, churchyards and schools – it works at any scale.

The role of gardens as part of a Nature Recovery Network is hugely important. If we are to meet our target of 30% of land and sea being managed for wildlife by 2030, we need everyone who has a garden or green space - no matter how big or how small - to understand how important those places are to the much bigger nature recovery network. Every garden that has areas managed for wildlife is helping support nature recovery, helping address climate change and providing health and wellbeing benefits to us all.

Whilst sometimes small, urban gardens can be some of the most diverse habitats in the country, providing homes, shelter breeding sites and food, and forage for a plethora of birds, invertebrates, plants, mammals and reptiles. Landscapes of concrete, tarmac, steel, fake grass and solid fences provide barriers to wildlife and can - and do - exacerbate environmental issues. But well-designed wildlife areas or ‘rewilded/wilded' gardens and green spaces provide the opposite.

Your garden could be part of a massive network of green spaces, a framework or even ‘green lung’ providing links for species to move through to feed and breed and connecting to parks and other urban green spaces, as well as the wider countryside beyond. Our gardens can form the bedrock of the nature recovery network running through villages towns and cities. Think of each garden as part of the puzzle. The more connected and greater these areas the greater the benefits.

Wilded lawns and flower packed garden beds not only provide food for pollinators such as bees, butterflies, hoverflies and moths (and who can’t be impressed by an exotic looking hummingbird hawkmoth or scarlet tiger for example!) but also absorb rainfall as it hits the ground, locking moisture into the soil and reducing issues of run off in heat periods of rain.

Garden trees for example help provide clean air by absorbing air pollution, providing oxygen and valuable shade, keeping temperatures cooler on a rapidly heating planet. And think of all that carbon being locked away as the trees grow.

Similarly, our garden ponds, no matter how big or small provide a refugia and water source for huge amounts of biodiversity, from the smallest water flea to dragonfly and damselfly, frogs, newts, and toads, and even in some cases otter and even water vole!