What you will need:
- Permission! Don’t forget to ask the boss / head teacher / parent.
- A sheltered spot – perhaps the corner of your garden or field
- Some volunteers – get a group involved – although you can do this with one or two people, it is more fun if more people are involved.
- Old logs or pieces of wood, fallen branches, bracken, a few old leaves, unwanted pallets, bamboo canes and similar natural items you may find lying around.
- Even old bricks with air holes and clay plant pots filled with twigs can be used in your design.
Mini-Beast Overwintering Area
This is a great project for doing at home or school, or even in the corner of your work grounds – if you have permission!
All you need is a quiet corner where you can build an overwintering area for the mini-beasts (insects if you prefer) that live in your garden, and maybe for some small mammals or amphibians too!
Why Build a Mini-Beast Overwintering Area?
It is really vital to help support the insects in your garden or grounds, as they form a vital part of the food chain for the insectivorous wildlife and in pollination of all the local plants in and around the local area. So any help and support you can give them is always going to be beneficial to the health of the local environment, both animals and plants.
Compost heaps are goods for this sort of thing, as they are snug and warm and generate a lot of heat, but they aren’t permanent, as they get turned over and the compost used, so this is an alternative way of giving your mini-beasts a head start in spring.
Getting Started
You can come up with an elaborate or visually attractive design if you are very creative or you can pile the items up haphazardly – but the aim is to create an overall bug friendly area which has lots of tiny hidey holes, a good shelter (don’t place any parts which could fill up with water or the insects will drown), and some warmth – which is generated by making a large pile of the things you have found.
Finished Project
Why not take a photo and email it to us at [email protected] and we’ll put up the best or most unusual designs on our Pinterest pages www.pinterest.com/tiggywinkles