We have a great opportunity at our community allotment project to allow school visits and eco clubs to connect to nature, protect the local biodiversity and help with fun tasks such as building insect hotels.
What is pollination?
Kerry and I asked a group of fifteen teenage students who looked at us a little awkwardly and silently.
Kerry's enthusiastic seven year old confidently gave them her description of the bee picking up the pollen from one flower and depositing it to another flower to make a seed.
The students had come with their teacher from a local school as part of their after school eco club. We talked a little bit about the importance of pollinators as about 70% of our food is reliant on pollination.
There have been many reports of a massive decline in our insect species therefore providing habitats and food sources for pollinators has become essential to their existence, because these insects, bugs, amphibians, and spiders are all part of the wonderful positive life cycle that keeps us and the plants alive.
We asked the students to work in small groups to make “bug hotels” using various prepared materials which would appeal to different insects, some of these include:
holes and small tubes for solitary bees,
dead wood loose bark for beetles,
dry leaves and straw for ladybirds,
broken tiles for the frogs and toads
This sketch image was prepared before the school visit had arrived and then handed out to the student groups as a simple, fun guide of how to build their insect hotels and the materials which could be used.
🌱 HANDY HINT:
Insect hotels are great for attracting beneficial insects into your garden & supporting your local biodiversity
We like to save lots of areas for wildlife around the garden so the students had lots of material to choose from. The young people got really engrossed with building them and even got quite creative. We had a great time in the garden up on the hill on this crisp sunny day in November.
It was fun afternoon chatting to the children and watching the fun they had in the garden work in a team to build their bee hotel, add their own flare of creativity and give them a name.
Creating insect hotels are a fun, easy and immersive garden activity to involve children of all ages into the garden and observing nature, with a large range of styles, shapes sand materials to choose from, you can let your imagination have fun with it!
Thanks for reading, if you have any community gardening stories or questions, we would love to hear from you!