Would you say my influences are Frank Lloyd Wright or I.M. Pei? Or Freecycle?
Whatever, I finished the insect hotel for our backyard yesterday. I even had some shingles left over from when we added on to our house, so hopefully the roof won't leak. Find out more about insect hotels here.
It already has occupants, the Orchard bees (Osmia) I got for free have been out there for a few weeks. No sign of them being active yet, but I can't blame them...it got down to below freezing again last night.
We have however provided plenty of new accommodation when those females emerge & start laying eggs.
The only issue with the Freecycle process is that there is a very good possibility that all the wood has been treated so that it won't rot. Which means that it's not good for insects! Which is why all furnishings inside (but not the structure) are made of scraps, logs, bamboo, pine cones, etc. from our yard and general scavenging in the neighborhood. All of which is natural, and most of which is rotting.
I am totally hoping to see all sorts of creepy crawlies & smaller mammalia back there soon (providing plenty of food for my beloved birds)!
Do you have an insect hotel? I'd love to see photos!
If you saw my post from last May, you know I'm interested in birds. One way to increase birds in your yard is to provide lots of cover for both birds & insects, which birds eat. We do have some brush & lots of rotting wood around, which help to create a natural habitat. In other words, neat yards are unnatural and may look nice to us, but they are quite critter-unfriendly.
As a gardener, you probably want bugs for birds to eat & more native bees to pollinate your yard, meaning you'll need to provide housing (i.e., cover) for those bugs. What to do? Well, one way is to build an insect hotel!
We have already started one, and we'll keep you posted as it goes along. But I thought you'd enjoy some photos of absolutely lovely & amazing insect hotels (apparently they're quite a thing in Europe). Sunset magazine refers to them as yard art; they have some nice photos of tiny insect hotels (more like insect inns).
Also, at the bottom of this post you'll see some links to "how to" pages.
Online how to guides:
1. Permaculture.org's How To page
2. BBC Wildlife provides a downloadable PDF
3. Pacific Horticulture magazine provides one, too
Note that all have great photos, too.
