We all love to see wildlife in our gardens and many common garden plants are perfect for attracting the tiny critters!
Top four plants to bring in the butterflies:
Butterfly Bush (Buddleia)
Ice Plant (Sedum)
Cone Flower (Echinacea)
Rudbeckia.
Another great way to make small creatures comfortable in our outside space is to give them a lovely place to live. Bug Hotels are perfect for this as they create loads of tiny spaces for them to hide!
All kinds of creatures might make your hotel their new home, toads, woodlice, spiders, bees and many, many more.
Bug hotels are fairly easy to construct and don't need any bought items or materials. Click the link below to download this project as a pdf.
How To Make your Bug House
1) Find the Location
Firstly you need to find a quiet spot in your garden. If you have an area you allow to grow wild or a spot under a bush or tree, this would be perfect. Although your hotel could go pretty much anywhere you liked.
2) Collect your materials
Next you need to collect a range of materials:
- Scrap wood
- Pallets
- Old tiles
- Old slate
- Moss
- Broken pots
- Twigs
- Dried hollow plants
- Bark
- Pine cones
- Bricks
- Dried leaves
these are just suggestions, anything that you can layer that offers texture and a range of surfaces and spaces is perfect. Get creative!
3) Create your structure
Pallets are perfect for this as they can be piled on top of each other to form a simple structure. I used a combination of bricks, slate and tiles to create my simple structure. Checking along the way that the structure is secure and will not fall down. Don't make your hotel too tall. Under 1/2m is ideal.
Although your Hotel will get damp, it is a good idea to add a roof. This will stop your new inhabitance getting washed out!
4) Fill the gaps
This is the exciting bit and the chance to get really creative. Come up with unusual combinations of textures and shapes to fill the spaces in your structure. Bricks with holes and hollow twigs are great!
Other Bug Houses!
Take a look!
Abacus Nursery - Lickey End
Primrose Hospice - Bromsgrove
There are so many areas to their large garden and every space is put to use. This huge hotel can be found in a wild area under large trees!
Tiny Trowels - Bromsgrove
CHECK THESE OUT!!! How amazing are these gorgeous little bug houses! These are a project completed at the Bromsgrove based Children's Gardening Club Tiny Trowels. So cool!
tinytrowels.co.uk
Haven Community Centre - Quinton
This Bug Hotel is HUGE!!! On a recent visit to see all the amazing projects Cath is doing with the Welsh House Farm Green Grafters I saw this fabulous structure in the corner of Haven Community Centre's garden!
havencommunityproject.com
Welsh House Farm Green Grafters Facebook
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