Fife pupil's winning Hedgehog Highway design for village housing development unveiled

Home builders Springfield Properties asked primary seven pupils at Strathkinness Primary School to design a frame for the ecological corridors.

Through small openings in the fences, the ‘highway’ will connect each garden just off the village’s High Road to allow hedgehogs to safely roam. The developer agreed with Fife Council to install the openings to enable hedgehogs to roam in gardens which will reduce how far they need to travel to forage for food and reducing road crossings for their safety.

Greta’s woodland themed design – with small hedgehog sketches, mushrooms and a hedgehog highway’ sign – was chosen to mark the highway in the garden of the Dunrobin show home.

Liz Cleghorn, Springfield regional sales director, said: “All of the designs were imaginative and really well done – it was a challenge to choose just one design to use for the hedgehog highways. Greta’s sketch stood out to us as we felt the woodland theme was a lovely nod to Strathkinness as a beautiful rural village that is home to ample wildlife.

"We welcomed the suggestion to include hedgehog highways as we pride ourselves on delivering high quality homes in developments where careful consideration has been given to the environment and local biodiversity. Hedgehogs are in decline across Scotland and the hedgehog highway is intended to help safeguard those which also call our development home.”

Primary seven pupil Greta said: “I don’t really know what inspired my design – the idea just popped into my head. We’ve been learning about the environment at school and I really care about the environment so I was excited to design something that will help the hedgehogs.”

The winning design was chosen in time to mark National Hedgehog Day on Friday, February 2.