Building a bug hotel here at Riverside

Today my daughter and I decided to construct an insect ‘hotel’ from materials we had gathered over the past few months.

We used an old wooden pallet as our frame. We nailed a large hardwood plank on top of it, as a roof, and then we filled the base with rocks and stones to help anchor it to the ground. It was set against a wall for stability.

We then placed some holey bricks at the base and proceeded to fill each layer with some cut up downpipe tubes, stuffed with various natural materials and we filled in the gaps between these tubes with bark and pines cones etc..

Materials we used:

Pine cones, layers of bark, straw, dried grasses, hollow stems from hogweed, bamboo tubes, cut branches, moss, twigs, bits of dried root, dried plant trimmings, feathers, hay, dried leaves, sawdust / wood-shavings etc

Here are a few photos of the finished article and my daughter proudly showing off her hard work.

We have over 18  other wildlife boxes here.Here are a few photos of just some of them. We have bird nest boxes, bug boxes, bat boxes, toad hideouts and even a hedgehog house…

Next on the agenda is to construct an owl box!