NIGHTFALL—and there’s a strange snorting and snuffling in the dark- ened garden. You might wonder what on earth it could be and go exploring with a torch. Your beam catches a rotund little animal, like a jumbo jacket potato on stiff, scurrying legs. It trots along the edge of the herbaceous border at surprising speed, led by that noisy, into-everything nose. A few decades ago, a hedgehog in the garden was nothing out of the ordinary, but, these days, it’s a wonder—something to celebrate.
Our nation’s love for the hedgehog is deeprooted and evidenced in art and literature of all kinds, spanning the centuries. From Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, who disguised herself as a washerwoman in Beatrix Potter’s eponymous tale, to Sonic, the high-speed and heroic blue hedgehog of video-game fame, our repre- sentations of hedgehogs reflect a tremendous cultural affection. This was borne out in 2016, when the hedgehog won a public ‘Britain’s favourite mammal’ vote held by the Royal Society of Biology, garnering 35.9% of the 5,000 votes and crushing its closest competition (the fox, with a mere 15.4%).
Another measure of this fondness is its variety of regional names, such as ‘furze-pig’ and ‘urchin’ (less charmingly, the Irish grain- neog translates as ‘horrible one’). Hedgehogs live in woodland and more open areas with bushes and hedges and in gardens of all sizes, throughout lowland parts of mainland Britain and more sparsely in Ireland.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة March 27, 2024 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة March 27, 2024 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Put some graphite in your pencil
Once used for daubing sheep, graphite went on to become as valuable as gold and wrote Keswick's place in history. Harry Pearson inhales that freshly sharpened-pencil smell
Dulce et decorum est
Michael Sandle is the Wilfred Owen of art, with his deeply felt sense of the futility of violence. John McEwen traces the career of this extraordinary artist ahead of his 88th birthday
Heaven is a place on earth
For the women of the Bloomsbury group, their country gardens were places of refuge, reflection and inspiration, as well as a means of keeping loved ones close by, discovers Deborah Nicholls-Lee
A haunt of ancient peace - The gardens at Iford Manor, near Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire The home of the Cartwright-Hignett family
After recent renovations, this masterpiece of Harold Peto's garden-making must be counted one of the finest gardens in England
It's the plants, stupid
I WON my first prize for gardening when I was nine years old at prep school. My grandmother was delighted-it was she who had sent me the seeds of godetia, eschscholtzia and Virginia stock that secured my victory.
Pretty as a picture
The proliferation of honey-coloured stone cottages is part of what makes the Cotswolds so beguiling. Here, we pick some of our favourites currently on the market
How golden was my valley
These four magnificent Cotswold properties enjoy splendid views of hill and dale
Mere moth or merveille du jour?
Moths might live in the shadows of their more flamboyant butterfly counterparts, but some have equally artistic names, thanks to a 'golden' group, discovers Peter Marren
The magnificent seven
The Mars Badminton Horse Trials, the oldest competition of its kind in the world, celebrates its 75th anniversary this weekend. Kate Green chooses seven heroic winners in its history
Angels in the house
Winged creatures, robed figures and celestial bodies are under threat in a rural church. Jo Caird speaks to the conservators working to save northern Europe's most complete Romanesque wall paintings