Hedgehog house: where to put it, which to buy, and how to build one before they go down for winter

By Linda Garrould · Published 22 September 2026

A hedgehog house goes out now, in September or October, in a quiet shady corner against a fence or hedge, with the door turned away from the north-east wind and away from open lawn, a pile of dry leaves beside it and a 13cm gap in the fence so something can actually reach it. Buy one with a tunnel, or make one from a plastic storage box for a tenner. Then leave it alone until the spring.

That is the whole of it, and if you are reading this at pick-up you may stop there. The rest of the page is the detail that the two-line versions leave out: why the direction matters, what makes a shop-bought house worth the money and what makes a cheap one useless, free plans for a timber box and for the storage-box version, a feeding station that keeps the cat out, what to feed them and when they go down for the winter, and the Bonfire Night check that ought to be on every family’s calendar. Every claim about the animals themselves comes from the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, Hedgehog Street, the RSPB, the RSPCA, the Wildlife Trusts and the other bodies listed at the end.

Do you need a hedgehog house at all?

Strictly, no. Hedgehog Street, the campaign run jointly by the People’s Trust for Endangered Species and the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, is candid that the best nest site you can offer is a natural one: a log pile, an undisturbed heap of leaves, the base of a hedge, or the compost heap, which has the added merit of being full of things to eat. A hedgehog house is the answer for the tidier garden, the one with a lawn and borders and nowhere for a hedgehog to disappear into, and for anyone who would rather the animal hibernated in a box with a roof than in the bonfire pile.

They do get used. Hedgehog Street’s Hedgehog Housing Census, published in 2022 from more than 4,300 responses, found that 81 per cent of houses had been used for summer day nesting, 66 per cent for winter day nesting, 57 per cent for hibernation and 28 per cent for breeding. The same survey found hedgehogs preferred homemade houses to bought ones, needed time to get used to a new house before moving in, and were more likely to use a house where food was put out, where bedding was provided, and where there was a way through between the front and back gardens. Hold on to those findings; most of this page follows from them.

The reason to bother is the state of the animal. The most recent national estimate, from 2018, put the British population at about 879,000, with roughly a quarter of them in towns. Rural numbers have fallen by somewhere between 30 and 75 per cent since 2000, according to the People’s Trust for Endangered Species; the urban picture is steadier and, in places, recovering, which is to say that gardens are now doing a job the countryside no longer does. The hedgehog went on to the British Red List as vulnerable to extinction in 2020, and in October 2024 the IUCN moved the western European hedgehog from least concern to near threatened across its whole range. It is also protected in law: Schedule 6 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 makes it illegal to kill or capture wild hedgehogs by the methods it lists, and the Wild Mammals (Protection) Act 1996 prohibits cruel treatment. None of that stops a strimmer or a slug pellet, which is where you come in.

When to put a hedgehog house out

Now. The house needs to be in place, and to have stopped smelling of the shop, before hedgehogs start looking for a hibernation site, which on the charities’ dates (below) means from late October or November. So September and October are the months to put a house out for winter, and a second window opens in March and April, when they are looking for somewhere to nest and raise hoglets.

Miss both and put it out anyway. A house that goes out in December may not host anyone that winter, but it will have weathered in by spring, and a house that has been in place for a long time is, by the census, the kind most likely to be used. The Hedgehog Street forum is full of people asking whether it is too late; the answer from the volunteers is that it is never too late to put one out, and that once it is out you leave it where it is.

Two things to know about autumn in particular. Late litters mean young hedgehogs are still trying to put on weight in October, and the BHPS advises that youngsters found from the end of October weighing under 450g may need rescuing, depending on the weather; anything under 250g in autumn is likely to be an orphan and should be rescued at once. And a hedgehog out in daylight is not usually well. The exception is a nursing mother nipping out for bedding on a summer afternoon, moving quickly and gone again; anything wobbling, lying still or out in winter daylight needs help. If you see one out in the day, the BHPS says it may need urgent help: put it in a high-sided box with a towel, a wrapped hot-water bottle it can get off, some meaty cat food and water, and ring the helpline on 01584 890 801.

Where to put a hedgehog house

The charities agree on the essentials and disagree, entertainingly, on the compass. The BHPS says a quiet, shady, sheltered, dry spot, against a wall, fence, hedge or shed, with the entrance not facing north or north-east, to avoid the cold winter winds. The RSPB says shady and quiet, under thick vegetation or behind a shed, with the front entrance out of the wind. The RHS says quiet and shady, preferably facing south or east. One garden-centre blog says south or west; a chainsaw manufacturer says the north side of the house. They are not really contradicting each other. The point of all of it is to keep the winter wind and rain from blowing straight in through the door, and the coldest winter winds come from the north and east. Turn the door away from those, and away from whichever way the wind comes across your own garden, and you have done what matters.

The census adds the finding that resolves the rest: houses were significantly less likely to be used when the entrance faced the open. A hedgehog leaving its house wants to step straight into cover, not on to a lawn. So the door faces the fence, the shrubs or the shed, at a slight angle so the wall does not block it, and the leaf pile goes beside the door where it can be dragged in.

Then the practical points, which are where most houses go wrong. Put it on two bricks or a slab so the floor is off the wet ground; a damp house is an empty house. Keep it away from the patio, the path, the trampoline and wherever the dog patrols; hedgehogs will tolerate a great deal but not a Labrador. Keep the feeding station at least a couple of metres away, because they do not usually eat where they sleep and food at the door attracts everything that is not a hedgehog. Keep it away from the compost heap, which is competition, and from a pond with steep sides. And make sure something can reach it: without a 13cm gap in the fence, Hedgehog Street says flatly, a hedgehog will not use your house no matter how lovely it is.

Then leave it alone. Not a peek, not a lift of the lid to see if anyone is home, especially between November and March when a hibernating hedgehog is using up its fat reserves and any disturbance can be, in Hedgehog Street’s word, extremely dangerous. If you must know, the BHPS method is to lay a small, light obstruction across the entrance, a twig or a scrunch of paper, and leave it for several nights; only if it has not moved in that time is the box likely to be empty. Or buy the camera.

What makes a good hedgehog house

A shop-bought house is a box with a hole in it, and the price mostly buys the things you cannot see in the photograph. Judge one by this list, which is drawn from the BHPS, Hedgehog Street and the Wildlife Trusts. The cheap boxes sold at B&M, Argos, Home Bargains and the rest should be held to exactly the same table; some pass, and the price is not the tell. The £15 boxes at the bottom of the search results generally do not: several we looked at measure 33 by 19cm, which is a shoebox, and have a bare hole in the front wall that any fox can reach through.

What to look for	Why it matters
An entrance of about 13cm with a tunnel or internal baffle	Hedgehog Street’s first rule. A badger or a fox can reach a paw through a plain hole; it cannot reach round a corner. If the box has no tunnel, it needs a partition inside.
Untreated timber, or a water-based treatment on the outside only	The BHPS says water-based preservative outside only and on no account creosote, paint or solvent preservatives, whose fumes linger. Hedgehog Street warns that pre-treated timber can contain chromated copper arsenate; larch, Douglas fir and cedar last well untreated.
A chamber at least 30 by 40cm inside	The RSPCA’s brick build allows a 40 by 30cm chamber; a nursing mother needs room for a nest and four or five hoglets. The tiny boxes are for the photograph, not the animal.
Ventilation	A short length of hosepipe or a hole at the back, so a sealed box does not run with condensation.
A roof that lifts off, screwed not nailed	For the once-a-year clean in spring. The BHPS says do not nail the roof down. A hinged or lift-off lid also means you can fit a camera.
A floor, or a plan for the ground	A solid floor keeps damp off and slugs out; a floorless house needs a slab or bricks under it. Either is fine; bare earth is not.
Weight, or a way to weight it	A house that a fox can roll over is not a house. Heavy timber, or a lid you can put a brick on.

You do not need the expensive one. The census found hedgehogs preferred homemade houses, and the storage-box build below costs less than a bag of hedgehog food. But if you would rather buy, here are three at three prices that come closest to the table; none is perfect, and the notes say where each falls short.

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How to make a hedgehog house

The £10 version: a plastic storage box

This is the build the Sussex Wildlife Trust recommends and the BHPS uses for its feeding station, and it is the right one for a Saturday afternoon with children. It needs no tools beyond a craft knife or a jigsaw, it costs whatever a storage box costs at the discount shop, and the census suggests a hedgehog will not think any less of it.

1. Choose the box. A 40 to 50 litre plastic storage box with a lid, opaque if you can find one. Dark grey or black is better than clear; a hedgehog wants a burrow, not a conservatory.
2. Cut the door. Mark a 13 by 13cm square low down on one of the short sides and cut it out with a craft knife or a jigsaw. Run duct tape or insulation tape round the cut edge so nothing is sharp.
3. Fit a baffle. Cut an offcut, a spare lid or a piece of ply to stand inside across the width of the box, a hand’s width in from the door, leaving a gap at one end. A fox or a cat can reach through a hole; it cannot reach round a corner.
4. Drainage and bedding. Drill or melt four or five small holes in the base so rain that gets in can get out, and two or three high up on each long side for air, as the Sussex Wildlife Trust advises; a sealed box sweats. Put a couple of handfuls of dry leaves inside and a much bigger pile outside the door.
5. Lid, sack and bricks. Put the lid on, drape a compost sack or a split bin bag over it and down the sides, and weight the lid with two bricks. Set the whole thing on two more bricks or a paving slab so the floor is off the wet ground.
6. Site it and leave it. Push it into a shady corner against the fence with the door turned away from the north-east and away from open lawn, bank leaves or logs over it so it disappears, and then do not touch it until the spring.

It will look like a plastic box for a week and like part of the garden by November. Resist the urge to cut a second, prettier door. One entrance, a baffle and darkness is what a hedgehog wants.

The timber box: hedgehog house plans and cutting list

For anyone with a jigsaw, an afternoon and an offcut of 18mm exterior plywood, or a few lengths of untreated larch or cedar board. The plan above gives a 59 by 34cm box with a sleeping chamber of 40 by 30cm and a 13cm-wide tunnel running the depth of the box along one end, so the hedgehog goes in at the front, up the tunnel and turns through a doorway at the back into the chamber. That L-shape is the whole point of the design: no paw can reach a sleeping animal round two corners. The box is 25cm high at the front and 28cm at the back, with the top edge of each end panel cut on that slope, so the lid sheds rain; the lid overhangs by a few centimetres all round and is screwed down through the battens rather than nailed, so it comes off in April. A 2cm hole at the back, or a stub of hosepipe pushed through it, is the ventilation.

The rules that matter are the ones about the wood. No treatment inside, ever. If you want to protect the outside, use a water-based preservative and let it cure for a fortnight before the house goes out, because the animals lick fences. No creosote, no paint, no offcuts of treated decking, and no MDF, which swells and falls apart in the wet. Line the floor with a couple of handfuls of dry leaves and put the rest of the bag outside the door.

Do not build it out of cardboard. It is a question people ask every autumn, and the answer is that cardboard lasts until the first wet week, and a house that collapses with a hedgehog inside is worse than no house. Bricks and a paving slab, which the RSPCA and the Natural History Museum both give plans for, are the other honest alternative: twenty or thirty bricks laid in a U with a slab on top and a brick tunnel at the entrance. It weighs well over a hundred kilos and nothing will move it.

A hedgehog feeding station

Same box, different job. A feeding station is a storage box with a 13cm hole, turned upside down over a bowl, so the cat, the fox and the neighbour’s spaniel cannot get at the food. The BHPS plan is exactly that: cut a 13 by 13cm square in one short side, tape the cut edge, put a brick on top so it cannot be nosed over, and put another brick about 13cm in front of the entrance so a larger animal cannot lie down and hook the food out with a paw. Hedgehog Street adds a brick maze inside, or a shallow dish of water across the entrance, both of which cats dislike.

Two refinements from the rescues. Give it two doors, one at each end, so a hedgehog that comes in and finds a larger hedgehog already at the bowl can leave without being cornered; hedgehogs are solitary and a food bowl is where the fights happen, which is why the BHPS suggests spreading food over several sites. And keep the water outside the station, in its own dish, so it does not get walked through. Site the station at least a couple of metres from the house, on a hard surface if you have one, and clean the bowls every day with something that is not your washing-up brush.

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What to feed hedgehogs

The BHPS answer, in full: a good-quality meaty hedgehog food, meaty cat or dog food, or dry cat biscuits, with meat as the first ingredient on the label, and fresh water to drink. That is the entire list. Supermarket own-label cat food is fine; the tin of something with a gravy and a picture of a kitten on it is fine. What you are supplementing is a diet of beetles, caterpillars, worms and whatever else a garden produces, and Hedgehog Street says there is no evidence that feeding makes them dependent on you.

Never milk. Hedgehogs are lactose intolerant and milk gives them diarrhoea. Never bread, which Hedgehog Street describes as fairly worthless to them and the Wildlife Trusts say causes the same trouble. The rescues also ask you not to make a habit of mealworms, peanuts or sunflower hearts, which are eaten greedily and are poor in calcium; a few as a treat is one thing, a bowl of them every night is not. Put the food out at dusk, in the station, a couple of metres from the house; take away anything uneaten in the morning; and wash the bowls after every use, separately from your own, with an animal-safe disinfectant.

Keep feeding through September and October, when the late litters are trying to reach a weight that will see them through the winter; Hedgehog Street says this is when supplementary feeding can prove important. The Wildlife Trusts suggest putting a little out in winter as well, because hedgehogs wake in mild spells and top up. If the bowl is untouched for a week in December, they have gone down; leave a small amount out anyway and check it every few days.

Hedgehog highways

A hedgehog walks about a mile a night, Hedgehog Street says, through parks and gardens looking for food and a mate, and a modern close of gravel-boarded fences is a maze of dead ends. The fix is a square hole 13 by 13cm at the base of each fence, or a brick left out of a wall, or a tunnel dug under the gravel board. It is big enough for the largest hedgehog and too small for nearly all pets. The BHPS asks for the same in any new wall or fence, and the RHS calls it a CD-sized hole, which dates the advice but conveys the size.

One gap is not a highway. Knock on the neighbours’ doors, or leave a note, and once the gaps are in, put them on the BIG Hedgehog Map at bighedgehogmap.org, which is how the campaign counts them. It is a good job for a child with a ruler and a marker pen, and the conversation with the neighbours is less awkward than it sounds; it is hard to say no to a hedgehog.

A Saturday project with children

The storage-box house is an afternoon’s work and most of it can be done by a seven-year-old with supervision at the cutting stage. Someone measures and marks the door; someone tapes the edge; someone stuffs leaves; someone chooses the corner using the checklist above, which is the part that teaches something. The rule to agree before you start is the hard one: once the house is in place, nobody looks inside it until Easter. That is a genuine test of a child, and of a good many adults. The wildlife camera is the honest compromise, and the morning ritual of checking the card is better than any lid-lifting. For more of this sort of thing, our half-term gardening ideas and July gardening projects are the same spirit, and the hedgehog is one of the ten free stencils on our pumpkin carving page.

When do hedgehogs hibernate?

From around November to around the end of March, with wide margins on both sides. The BHPS says hibernation usually begins in November, December or even January and ends about mid-March to early April; Hedgehog Street says October or November through to March or April, and notes that mild winters keep them active into December. The trigger is temperature and food rather than the calendar, which is why the same garden can have a hedgehog down in mid-November one year and still at the bowl at Christmas the next.

They do not sleep through. Most hedgehogs, the BHPS says, wake frequently during hibernation but rarely leave the nest, and a hibernating hedgehog is running on the fat it built up in autumn. The optimum temperature for hibernation is about 4°C; at 10°C the fat is used up twice as fast, which is why a house in a warm spot against a south-facing boiler-room wall is not a kindness, and why the BHPS discourages the well-meant idea of bringing a healthy hedgehog into a shed or garage for the winter, where it is neither warm nor cold. Leave the healthy ones where they are, in the wild. Rescue only the sick, injured, underweight or orphaned, and ring the helpline before you decide which is which.

The hedgehog house calendar

When	What to do
January and February	Nothing. Do not lift the lid, do not tidy the corner, do not move the house. A little food out in mild spells, checked every few days.
Late March and April	The clean-out. Paper test across the door, left for several nights; only if it stays put take out the old bedding, scrub with boiling water, dry, and refill with fresh leaves. Put a new house out now for the nesting season. Start feeding again as they emerge, thin and hungry.
May to September	Nesting and hoglets. Never clean or move the house. Water matters more than food in a dry spell; a shallow dish out every night. Strimmers and forks are the killers: check long grass and the compost heap before you start.
September and October	Put a house out for winter. Feed every night to help the late litters reach weight. Refresh the leaf pile by the door. Cut the fence gaps before the ground freezes.
5 November	The bonfire. Build it on the day, or move the whole pile to a new spot just before you light it. Torch in, lift the base with a broom handle, never a fork, and light from one side so anything you missed has a way out. Then home for parkin.
November and December	They go down. Hands off the house from now until March. Leave a small amount of food out and do not worry when it stops going.

The bonfire deserves its own paragraph, because it is the one night of the year when a hedgehog’s idea of a good nest and a family’s idea of a good evening are the same heap of sticks. The RSPCA says hedgehogs hide in the centre and the bottom two feet of a bonfire; the BHPS says build it on the day, move it before lighting, look with a torch and lift with a pole or broom, never a spade or fork. If you find one, lift it out with its nest into a high-sided box with plenty of torn newspaper or straw, keep it somewhere quiet, and release it under a hedge near where you found it once the embers are properly out. The RSPCA adds a metre of chicken wire round the base, angled outwards, for the weeks the pile stands waiting, and lighting from one side rather than the middle. All of this takes ten minutes and is a better lesson for the children than anything on the pumpkin page.

The don’t list

• Slug pellets. The BHPS asks that you do not use them at all. The slugs themselves are hedgehog food, and a garden without slugs is a garden without hedgehogs.
• Netting. Pea and bean netting a foot off the ground so a hedgehog passes underneath rather than through it; sports nets and fruit-cage netting stored off the ground. Entanglement is a slow death.
• Ponds. Hedgehogs swim well but cannot climb a vertical liner. A gently sloping edge, a ramp or a fold of chicken wire into the water on at least one side.
• Strimmers. The RHS calls them one of the biggest causes of fatal or severe injury. Walk the long grass first, every time, and go through the wild patch with a rake before the mower.
• The compost heap. Turn it with care in spring and summer. The BHPS puts it plainly: one thrust of a fork can kill more than one baby hedgehog.
• Drains and chemicals. Keep drain holes covered, and oil, antifreeze and garden chemicals off the shed floor.
• Wood preserver. They lick freshly treated fences. Water-based, and let it cure.
• Litter. Multipack rings, yoghurt pots and crisp packets kill hedgehogs every year. A quick sweep of the garden before dusk in the summer holidays.

Hedgehog houses: your questions answered

Where is the best place to put a hedgehog house?

In a quiet, shady, sheltered corner of the back garden, against a wall, fence, hedge or shed, under a shrub if you have one, with the entrance turned away from the north and north-east and not facing open lawn. Keep it away from the patio, the path and the compost heap, put it on bricks or a slab so the floor stays dry, and make sure there is a way into the garden through the fence.

Which way should a hedgehog house face?

Away from the cold. The British Hedgehog Preservation Society says the entrance should not face north or north-east, the RSPB says out of the wind, and the RHS suggests south or east. They are all saying the same thing: keep the winter wind and rain from blowing straight in. The housing census run by Hedgehog Street found houses were significantly less likely to be used when the entrance faced the open, so tuck the door towards the fence or the shrubs, not the lawn.

When should I put out a hedgehog house?

Now, if it is September or October, for the hibernation season; or in March and April, for the nesting season. Any time is better than never. Hedgehogs need time to get used to a new house before they use it, so a house that goes out in December can still be in use by spring.

What should I put in a hedgehog house?

A couple of handfuls of dry leaves, straw or hay to start it off, and not newspaper, which goes to pulp, and a much bigger pile of dry leaves outside the door; hedgehogs like to carry in their own bedding, and the BHPS suggests leaving dry leaves outside the door for the resident to take in. Do not put food inside: hedgehogs do not usually eat where they sleep, and food in the house brings slugs, rats and flies.

Can I move a hedgehog house once it is in place?

Not once anyone might be in it, and preferably not at all. From November to March there may be a hibernating hedgehog inside whose fat reserves cannot afford the disturbance, and in May to September there may be a mother and hoglets. Choose the spot carefully in the first place and leave it there; the housing census found houses that had been in place a long time were the ones most likely to be used.

How do I know if a hedgehog is using the house?

Without lifting the lid: lay a small, light obstruction across the entrance, a scrunched piece of paper or a large flower head, and leave it for several nights. If it is pushed aside, someone is home; the BHPS says only an obstruction that stays put over several days and nights suggests the box is empty. Leaves disappearing from the pile outside the door and droppings, dark and glossy and about the size of a cocktail sausage, are the other signs. A cheap wildlife camera on a cane settles it.

Why is my hedgehog house not being used?

Usually one of four things: there is no way into the garden (a 13cm gap in the fence solves it), the house is too exposed or in the wrong spot, it is too new (give it a season), or there is nothing to eat. Hedgehog Street’s census found houses were more likely to be used where food was provided and where there was a route between front and back gardens. Slugs in the bedding, a cat asleep in it or a damp floor all put them off too.

Should I clean out a hedgehog house, and when?

Once a year, in late March or early April, after hibernation and before the first litters; Hedgehog Street also allows October, after the last litters and before hibernation. Check it is empty first with the paper test, left across the door for several nights, then take out the old bedding, scrub it with boiling water and no chemicals, let it dry and put fresh leaves in. Never clean it if a hedgehog is in residence.

What should I feed hedgehogs, and when should I stop?

Meaty cat or dog food, dry cat biscuits or a good hedgehog food with meat as the first ingredient, and a shallow dish of water. Never milk, which they cannot digest, and never bread. Put it out at dusk, a couple of metres from the house, and keep going through September and October when they are fattening up; the Wildlife Trusts suggest a little in winter too, for any hedgehog that wakes in a mild spell.

How big should the entrance hole be?

About 13 by 13cm, the same size the charities use for hedgehog highways and feeding stations: big enough for the largest hedgehog and too small for nearly all cats, foxes and badgers. Add a tunnel or an internal baffle so a paw cannot reach the sleeping chamber.

Can I make a hedgehog house out of cardboard?

Not one that will last. Cardboard collapses in the first wet week and a collapsed house with a hedgehog inside is worse than no house. A plastic storage box costs a few pounds and does the job for years; the build is above.

Should I check my bonfire for hedgehogs?

Yes, every time. Build it on the day you light it, or move the whole pile to a new spot just before lighting; then shine a torch in and lift the base with a broom handle, never a fork, and light it from one side so anything you missed has a way out. Hedgehogs hide in the centre and the bottom two feet of a bonfire, and a pile of brash that has stood for a fortnight in October is exactly the nest they are looking for.

Sources

• British Hedgehog Preservation Society: hedgehog homes — siting, entrance direction, wood treatment, cleaning, the obstruction test, no food inside; feeding; hibernation; autumn juveniles (the 450g and 250g figures); found a hedgehog (helpline 01584 890 801); gardening with hedgehogs (highways, hazards, bonfires); the storage-box feeding station plan; Bonfire Night advice.
• Hedgehog Street: hedgehog homes — tunnels, untreated timber, CCA, access; the Hedgehog Housing Census (2022); cleaning out boxes; feeding; hibernation; hedgehog highways; how many hedgehogs are left; IUCN near threatened, October 2024; legal protection; garden hazards.
• People’s Trust for Endangered Species: hedgehogs — the 30–75 per cent rural decline since 2000.
• RSPB: build a hedgehog house; RSPCA: build a hedgehog house (the brick build); RSPCA: bonfires; RSPCA: hedgehogs in the garden.
• The Wildlife Trusts: how to build a hedgehog home; what to feed hedgehogs (winter feeding); Sussex Wildlife Trust: the storage-box house.
• RHS: hedgehog-friendly gardening — siting, strimmers, the CD-sized hole; Natural History Museum: how to make a hedgehog house.

Related reading

• How to start composting — the other place a hedgehog would rather sleep, and how to turn it without a tragedy.
• Small garden ideas — where a hedgehog house fits when there is not much garden to fit it in.
• Kids’ gardening ideas for half-term and for July — more Saturday projects.
• Pumpkin carving ideas — with a hedgehog stencil, for the same weekend.
• Yorkshire parkin — for after the bonfire check.
• Sloe gin — the hedgerow in a bottle; the blackthorn it comes from is a hedgehog hedge too.
• Weekend gardening — everything else for the autumn.

Updated 22 September 2026. Wildlife guidance checked against the sources above on 22 September 2026; if a charity changes its advice, this page follows.

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