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so often we look at our garden and think
that it's not tidy enough and we need to
clean it up a little bit more but you
know nature isn't always clean and tidy
either and there's a benefit to that we
get a lot of insects in our garden now
if you want to keep your garden neat and
tidy you might think about using some of
those untidy items in a different way
we've got another way to recycle some of
those old garden scraps and what we're
going to build today is a insect Hotel
um here we've created the structure for
ours already and this is a quite large
one um we've made it out of several
layers of pallets and and cinder blocks
and different bricks and things and you
don't need to necessarily make one this
big but what we've created is a lot of
holes and Nooks where we're going to
fill it with that plant debris and
entice different insects to come in here
now we've placed stars in kind of a
partly shady area and that's because
some insects like shade um frogs and
toads like to be in a shade damp area
where some of your insects like bees
like to be up in the sunny location so
you can see we've got a lot of sun up
here on the top of it if you don't want
to build one this large because you know
it can be quite a construction feat um
we have stabilized ours with some te
Post in the center here but you can also
recycle old bird houses so here we have
an old bird house house that you can see
also has different nooks and crannies in
it so that you can fill those with
organic matter and basically any
container that has different spaces that
you can fill would make a great ideal uh
insect Hotel it doesn't have to be a
particular size at all you can see this
is much smaller whereas the one we've
built here is much larger the one thing
you want to keep in mind is that you're
trying to invite insects into your
backyard and so you don't want this
right by your back door here we've
placed it a little bit further away from
the main Garden um and the next thing to
do is we just need to fill all these
crevices with our organic matter to make
it more inviting for those insects
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we've filled our holes with a variety of
textures and materials and again you're
trying to create a habitat for a lot of
different insects and different insects
need different things there's some
insects that like to be solitary in fact
there's some bees that like to be
solitary and so we've drilled some holes
here in these old stumps because they'll
come in behind here and lay their eggs
in here and then actually cover them
over with mud so this is a great uh
thing for solitary bees we've purposely
placed these On the Sunny Side of the
insect Hotel uh because bees are one
insect that like to be in the sunshine
now down below here we've got some other
materials that we've used um we have in
fact here an Old Clay Pot that we've
placed in here for frogs and toads uh
they like to be in a more moist area and
so we've put them down on the the soil
level um and they can go in there and
get away from any of the other Critters
there's other things such as corrugated
cardboard that we've used which is a
nice thing for lace wings um to create a
habitat for those and those are another
beneficial insect we had a lot of fun
building this here at the gardens and I
would encourage you also to build one
it's fun to be creative um you can use
different materials and again it can be
almost any size you can use 2 L bottles
tint cans yarn a lot of different things
you can see here we've cleaned out our
garden and we've used a lot of different
organic matters but I would encourage
you to go see what you can find in your
backyard and invite those insects in we
would love to hear about your insect
Hotel so please share with us any
stories or photos that you have we hope
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