something for the garden!
We actually started this before Lottie made an arrival last week, with some of the gorgeous spring sunshine we've been having I've been keen to get the garden into a nice place for the children to roam and so has hubby!
He's been pruning and mowing and I've been looking for garden toys and activities for the little ones.
I've always been keen on bird tables, houses and insect homes! You can get some really pretty ones now and some fun to make practical ones too! Unfortunately they don't always come cheap and some of the insect houses in the garden centres are £20-£30.
So we set out to make our own. Pinterest is full of inspiration and designs for insect hotels and is great place to explore ideas for your bug home.
Here are some of the designs we liked:
I also found some excellent guides to constructing an insect hotel and what materials to use for the 'rooms'
This was our personal favourite! It's a really colourful and illustrative guide.
http://www.daviddomoney.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/David-Domoneys-Complete-Guide-to-Making-Your-Own-Insect-Hotels.pdf
We scoured the local green areas around the house to collect bits, walked over to the common with Oscar and went for walks with family to collect pine cones, dried leaves, reeds, moss and picked up some bamboo from B&Q.
To create little quarters in the hotel we separated areas off using tin cans, we actually recycled Oscar's formula tins as they're a nice big size to fill and create bug friendly spaces. The hotel also features a brick at the base with little crevices and holes for the bugs to nestle in, this also gives some weight to the hotel which will help stop it toppling in the wind.
The structure of our bug hotel was a shelf type design made from wood, varnished with wood protector and then painted with an outdoor paint we found in the garden shed. Its a nice natural green colour so blends in well in the garden. I believe its a garden paint available at B&Q but if you have materials spare lying around the house it's always cheaper and more fun just to re use things!
Here is our frame being constructed in the woodwork stage by our lovely Grandad :)
Here you can see the frame is made from wood which has been cut to size, pieced
together and affixed with screws and then varnished. A final coat is being applied, we went for the green paint instead of the white/cream.
The fun part was filling the bug hotel with our little toddler Oscar! Here he is at work in the garden:
And here is the progress thus far! We still have some dried leaves and other nesting materials to finalise the hotel before its grand opening! But we're really pleased with it so far and are looking forward to welcoming some creepy crawlies into the living quarters real soon :)
If you're handy with woodwork and like painting and recycling items we hope this has inspired you to put together your own bug hotel. It doesn't even need to be made from wood, there are lots of additional ideas for structures of bug houses including empty cans, bottles or simply reusing an old compartment drawer to fill. Explore what items you have laying around the house/ shed/ garage for ideas and you can also pick items up that might work from the dump or from free cycle groups.
Just think of all those beautiful butterflies, ladybirds and bumble bees you could have visiting soon and the good they do for nourishing the garden and encouraging local wildlife.
No comments:
Post a Comment