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Urban Wildlife, Habitat & Design

Insect hotels, mansions and other dwellings

By June 23, 2010August 6th, 202110 Comments
Future of Nature Garden

Future Nature Garden

Future of Nature Garden

Future Nature Garden

Future Nature Garden

Future Nature Garden

In a continuation of the insect theme from the post about the Beyond the Hive Competition, here are some more examples of interesting designs, from simple to extravagant. Insects are getting the luxury treatment in a number of garden and structure designs recently. Many of these structures are made with reclaimed materials such as egg cartons, broken stones, tiles and concrete, gathered twigs, hay and dead wood, and old plant containers. The creativity of the variety of projects is great to see. Do a Google image search for ‘insect hotel’ to see the variety of ideas that are out there.

From the Chelsea Flower Show a year ago, there was a garden titled Future Nature Garden which featured a number of ecological design elements such as stormwater retention, a green roof and a couple of interesting structures. The idea of the garden was to make it practical enough that anyone could implement the design ideas. Some other design features included a living tower with drought-resistant plants, butterfly mounds and insect towers also planted with drought-resistant plants.

Visit the website to see a 360° tour with a description of the garden.

View a video tour of the garden and hear the designers explain the ideas behind the garden design.

There’s a good article on the Guardian’s Gardening Blog about making a wildlife stack with some good detailed instructions.
How to make a mini wildlife stack

Wildlife Stack

Wildlife Stack

Here is a good visual page about making a mini-beast mansion from Wild About Your Garden on the BBC. Mini-beast mansion (pdf)

Mini-beast Mansion

Mini-beast Mansion

This example comes from the Wildlife Trust’s publication Building an Invertebrate Habitat (pdf). The document also contains detailed directions on how to build a structure like this. It’s a good resource to find out the basics of what’s required for a structure like this and then can be used as a base to come up with other creative designs.

Invertebrate Habitat

Invertebrate Habitat

Here are a couple more good design resources.

How to make a habitat wall – Sussex Wildlife Trust

The Bug Hotel

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Kelly Brenner

Kelly Brenner

Kelly Brenner is a naturalist, writer and artist based in Seattle. She is the author of THE NATURALIST AT HOME: Projects for Discovering the Hidden World Around Us and NATURE OBSCURA: A City’s Hidden Natural World from Mountaineers Books, a finalist for the Washington State Book Awards and Pacific Northwest Book Awards. She writes articles about natural history and has bylines in Crosscut, Popular Science, National Wildlife Magazine and others. On the side she writes fiction.