My insect hotel

During 2012 lots of gardeners in the UK and elsewhere noticed a scarcity of insects in their gardens, especially the beautiful ones like butterflies and dragonflies, and the beneficial ones such as hoverflies, ladybirds etc - and the general shortage of bees is already well known. This was probably due to the really awful weather we had, and hopefully is not going to become the norm. With a bit of luck next year's weather will be better, enabling insect populations to re-establish, but because of the long-term effects of Climate Change we can't count on this, so I think we all need to do whatever we can to promote the survival of insects of all sorts. Now I know that many people are horrified by "creepie-crawlies" like spiders, centipedes, millipedes, woodlice etc which are not obviously either beneficial or beautiful, but the fact is that they are all part of Nature's food chain. For instance, although all of us gardeners detest aphids (greenfly, blackfly etc), the unfortunate fact is that they are the staple food of ladybirds, so if there are no aphids around then the ladybirds move on (or die off).

As a little gesture towards insect sustainability I have for the past two years maintained a small logpile in a corner of my garden which would otherwise be useless since it gets practically no light or rainfall:

The idea is that these slowly decaying logs and branches will provide a refuge for many tiny bugs which will provide the prey for larger bugs, which in turn will provide sustenance for the really big bugs.... etc. As the saying goes: "Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, and little fleas have lesser fleas, and so on, ad infinitum."

Establishing a log-pile like mine is something that everyone who owns a garden or plot can do with minimal effort and no expenditure of money, since it uses scrap wood that would otherwise be thrown away or burned. And the best thing is that it is totally "scaleable". My garden is small, so I have small log-pile, but if you have a huge garden then you can afford to have a huge log-pile.

As well as a log-pile maybe you could make an "insect hotel" out of plant stems and suchlike. The stems of some plants are hollow, and when they die down and dry out in the Autumn they provide good nesting and  places for lots of different types of insect. The best thing to do is to cut some stems into short sections and tie them up with string to make little bundles, and then push them into the twiggiest part of a bush or hedge - or maybe even tie them to a fence-post. Or you could make something much more ambitious out of pallets or scrap timber, like this wonderful construction seen recently on Pinterest:



Insect hotel - via Pinterest

If you need further inspiration, have a look at these other brilliant resources:-

http://www.inspirationgreen.com/insect-habitats.html

http://www.metrofieldguide.com/insect-hotels-mansions-and-other-dwellings/

I think I know now what to do with the pallet on which my Woodblocx raised bed kit recently arrived...

If you're not into building insect hotels, another wildlife-friendly thing to do is to sow seeds that will produce flowers attractive to bees. My blogging friend Jo wrote about this the other day, proving to us all that if you shop around wisely you can get a large number of suitable flowers for not much money. And a wildflower meadow would be so much nicer than just a patch of long grass, wouldn't it?

These things are not difficult to do, Folks, so please get out there and do your bit!