Workshop Day :) ~ 1/12/23 ~ Insect Hotel Building Workshop!

We gathered early on Friday, in the below freezing conditions, to try make some warm homes for our insects companions at Shared Grounds. 

We started the day out by spreading the wood shaving we had saved from our wood carving workshop, bringing this generative 'waste' back to the garden to feed into the soil. 

Looking back at the information we had gathered about building insect hotels, see earlier blog post here, we wanted to come up with some forms that would enable good air flow (lowering the risk of damp and mould development) and involve sensible materials which we also had available that we could reuse. We first had a walk around SG and thought it would make sense to place one hotel from the green fence on the edge of the park, which was quite open and easily accessible, and to make another one which would be self standing within the more overgrown and dense parts of the garden. 

We had a good look over the different materials we had to hand and decided to make the insect hotels from a combination of wood of old pallets received via our gemeente wijktuin friend Roland, metal chicken wire Guillem had laying around (to help keep smaller pieces in place), bamboo sticks collected about, and dried branches picked up from the trees and shrubs. We wanted to use the material with as little wastage as possible, so decided to use the wood slats length to its benefit, forming a bit of a modular structure. Each of us set about on a task be it screwing the form together or cutting the bamboo and branches into smaller sections. Even with the chilling air it was fun to get down to work, figuring out together along the way the forms and components which we could implement into the finished hotels, such as including a little roof to keep it dry :)

We finished the day by installing one of the hotels along the fence in the radiating sunshine! Before sharing some hot noodles to warm our insides :) Cheers to those that joined, we had a great time, hoping the insects enjoy the new addition :)

Here's a photo recap shot by Silvia and Guillem