[Hornbeam]

I have a friend who is a veterinary nurse. The stories she can tell about paralysed hedgehogs would make you weep. How do they come to be paralysed? By eating slugs that have eaten slug pellets. Where are all the thrushes gone? Seen any broken snail shells around a thrush's anvil lately?

My solution is to avoid growing plants that slugs like - so delphs and lupins are out. When I plant out seedlings, I surround them with a physical barrier like SlugStoppah. That simply dries up the slug slime so they can't cross the barrier. Poisons will always kill more than your intended targets. So I don't use any at all. Wild life gets into balance and predators eat pests. Result is very little slug damage and no aphids on roses' cos the bluetits, ladybirds and lacewings eat them all for me. They wouldn't if I sprayed nasty poisons.