We recently made a new insect hotel and revamped one of the older ones, so I thought I would share them with you. This post is particularly for the follower who asked about insect hotels and adding green roofs to them. Apologies for not getting back to you sooner and more personally – no excuse except a bad memory.
This is the first one we built in our garden and it has proved very successful with plenty of minibeast visitors but it also gave us some surprises! Last year a Dunnock nested on one of the layers and at the end of the year we discovered that a Goldcrest had nested in one of the holes in a brick.
We then built a second hotel for our garden critters in our Spring Border and this one was created from an old wooden vegetable box. This one had a surprise for us too as at the end of last summer we found an old nest of a Dunnock.
We next made a smaller insect hotel from a wine box and placed it in the Crescent Garden. So far no bird has nested in it but there are lots of “minibeasts” especially Ladybirds living in it and hibernating there through the colder months. Sitting on top of it though is one of our pieces of sculpture, a thoughtful young girl.
And then this spring we added yet another insect hotel, this time we constructed it in our Freda Garden and placed two small log piles on each side of it to attract Violet Ground Beetles who we hope will eat the slug eggs in the ground.
On our allotment we made an insect home with a green roof to add further interest and another habitat. We grow succulents, Sedums and Sempervivums on top of our insect hotel as they have tiny flowers loved by insects especially bees. The secret is to make a tray which sits on top and supported by 4 posts banged into the ground at each corner of the hotel. This means the posts support the green roof rather than putting weight on the insect hotel itself.
Each spring on warm, calm days we enjoy seeing the Ladybirds emerging and resting on the driftwood pieces to absorb the warmth of the sun.
greenbenchramblings 