Welcome to our Firbank Rd Wilderhood Watch page!
We had a fantastic time at our Beech rd/Firbank rd stall on Sunday October 8, 2022. Not only were our seed and plant giveaways, as well as our custom made cards, very popular, but we gained some lovely new recruits to help us with our street projects!
As Firbank Rd backs on to Beech Bottom Dyke, we are keen to make sure any hedgehogs that live there are able to access our gardens.
A lot of us on our street have noticed that we’re seeing fewer animals in our gardens, including hedgehogs. We’re banding together to do everything we can to encourage them to start visiting again, starting with making sure they can easily get in and out of our gardens.
Michaela, who was recently released in Jennings Rd (also a Wilderhood Watch street)
Hedgehogs need to travel over a mile a night in order to find food, mates and shelter, so it’s very important that they have access to our gardens, and that they are Hedgehog Friendly. That means, amongst other things, please don’t use slug pellets, or leave rat poison in your garden.
As Firbank Rd runs parallel to Beech Bottom Dyke, which hopefully does have a hedgehog population, please remember to give hedgehogs access to and from there as well as linking your garden to your neighbours’. You can do this by making sure you have a 13cm x 13cm hole in your garden fences, or even better, replacing old fences with native hedgerows. (The Woodland Trust has lots of sapling packs suitable for hedge planting to choose from.)
By registering your hole on the Big Hedgehog Map, along with any hedgehog sightings, it will help scientists monitor the hedgehog population in our area.
As well as creating safer gardens with better access, we are also determined to protect any hedgehogs who venture on to the road. We’ve put up six 20mph Hedgehog signs along our street, which hopefully will encourage motorists to slow down and drive more carefully.
Please have a look at our Lancaster and Gurney Court Rd project page for further information on keeping hedgehogs safe, along with information on how to create a dog-friendly hedgehog hole!
Other projects we are running:
We’ve been busy swapping pollinator-friendly plants along Firbank rd, most recently at a Buzz Trail stall during Sustfest 2022. We’re hoping that as more people plant flowers that are especially attractive to pollinators, we’ll see a greater variety of insects in our gardens.
If you would like to become involved in our Pollinator Highway and/or Hedgehog Street projects, or help weed our street as part of our Glyphosate-free streets project, please contact Lorraine Imber at laine@theimbers.co.uk or ph. 07579 033768.
