Garden Planning

Many people are now planning their traditional garden for the UK climate and choosing what plants they would like for their garden, so if this is your type of garden then have you thought about the insects that your garden needs, in many cases all gardens need the insects as often many of the smaller insects are food for other insects and a food source attracts other insects to your garden and suddenly you have a haven for insects and all your plants have unprecedented levels of pollination.

Insect friendly plants can be planted anywhere and if anyone takes a simple 3D approach to providing insect friendly plants and plant some hanging baskets or planters higher up then they will attract flying insects such as bees and butterflies, and if some are planted at ground level the flying insects will find them and be attracted to the ground level plants and pollinate them, basically you are making a 3D garden grid of insect friendly plants.
Insects need water and again simply recycling some simple containers which are shallow in depth and with a raised edge so insects can land on them and drink from the edge without falling into the water, or filling one edge of the container with small stones will give insects something to land on and walk down to the water and allow them to drink without the risk of falling into the water and drowning.

You can make a bug area for non flying insects quickly and easily, and you can use wholly recycled materials if you like; many modern gardens are the bland gardens full of slabs, stones, and the more recent block paving which means everything is clean and almost sterile. If you can allocate a bit of garden you can bake an insect den from a variety of materials such as whole or broken bricks with the holes or slots in the middle, intact or rotting logs with a few holes drilled into them will encourage a whole raft of insects and give them a home inside them, or in the cavities between the logs, of even make a small mesh basket from an offcut of mesh and fill it with a few leaves it will attract a host of insects. If you have roadworks going on you can often get items such as half a shovel of road stone for nothing and a pile of this makes a great insect warren where smaller insects can travel through the gaps in the road stone and make a new home for the summer. These are great projects for children and they can use their creativity to make them and actually see their creation come to life through the summer and into the winter, they can use their imagination to create their insect warrens and have fun doing it, if space is a problem you can build them into anything from an old bucket to a saucepan which has lost its handle and you can even sink them into the ground if you like.