A step-by-step guide to making a bug hotel to help attract pollinators into your garden.
You can help attract pollinators into your garden by creating artificial habitats, like a ‘Bug Hotel’ or ‘Pollination Palace’. A sanctuary for overwintering insects can be an interesting feature in your garden and is also a fun and easy activity to do with your kids.
A step-by-step guide to making a bug hotel
1. Gather materials, sticks, logs, planks of untreated wood, bricks, old pots, bark, moss, straw, shredded wool blankets, sand, and stones for around your garden.
2. Drill holes in wood or logs for invertebrates such as solitary wasps and mining bees.
3. Pile rocks and stones for slugs, slaters, and lizards.
4. Fold up pieces of old wool carpet or blanket in between layers for damp loving insects.
5. Piles of straw, leaf litter or coconut coir to mimic dry grassy tussock that makes good nesting spots for bumblebees.
6. Old terracotta pots filled with bark, sand and small stones for burrowing insects.
7. Create piles of dead and rotting branches for hibernating larvae of moths, butterflies and hoverflies.
8. Include a shallow tray of water filled with pebbles, moss, or other debris for aquatic larvae.
