Hedgehog Awareness Week takes place in Warwickshire from the start of May

A Leamington woman is highlighting how caring for hedgehogs helped her to get through postnatal depression in the run-up to a national event dedicated to the prickly but popular animals.

Hedgehog Awareness Week will run from Sunday (April 30) to Saturday (May 6)

And mother-of-two Parm-Asberg Gill is encouraging people to learn more about how they can help hedgehogs in support of the event.

She said: “I found my love of hedgehogs several years ago when I was suffering from postnatal depression.

"Feeding and helping the little hogs in my garden improved my mental wellbeing.

"I left my garden to 'rewild' itself – to which my husband and children just about agreed - and we made gaps in the fences, stopped mowing the lawn, left the hedges to grow and made it a perfect site for hedgehogs.

“I later began to work closely with Sally Ellis, a carer and co-ordinator from Warwickshire Hedgehog Rescue, bringing her poorly hogs I had found and opened up my garden for the 'homeless' rescued ones.

Hedgehog Awareness Week, organised annually by the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, aims to highlight the problems hedgehogs face and how people can help them.

Parm said: “Hedgehogs are in serious decline in the UK and listed as vulnerable to extinction.

"I'm trying to raise awareness of local hedgehogs, the ways in which local people can help and support them and other wildlife in their gardens and outside spaces.

"I also want to make the local parks / green areas as hedgehog friendly as possible.

"By supporting hogs, I believe it can help people's mental health and wellbeing as well as hedgehog conservation.”

Parm, a Hedgehog Champion with the national campaign group Hedgehog Street, has also been working with Warwickshire Wildlife Trust to show residents how they can support hedgehogs by doing things such as making ‘hedgehog holes’ in fences, reporting sightings on the online Hedgehog sightings map, leaving wild areas in their gardens and supplement feeding.

She said: "My garden is all set up for hedgehogs but one garden is no way enough.”

For more information about Hedgehog Awareness Week visit https://bit.ly/3NkvnVi