High Rise Bugs
Today We built a mansion, well to be precise, the young people from HITS did under my guidance. As part of the My Wildspace project in in Victoria Park we built a palace or as it turned out more of Multi-story condo for bugs. We met the Victoria Park Environment Team (VPET) volunteers at 10.00am and delegated tasks for the day. While VPET set about a clean-up on the area of the park they look after, I took a task force on a scavenging hunt in search of suitable materials from which to build our Bug Mansion.
First stop was VPReclamation, where we found some really brilliant items. The owner looked on us kindly and donated the materials for free, so a big thank you for that. We then headed for Oxmoor LNR and collected some reed stems and some Himalayan Balsam Stems (an invasive non-native which is best controlled by pulling just before it flowers) to use as insect tubes in the bug building.
On our return we set about building the bug mansion, everyone contributed and I think the end result is pretty impressive, when you consider almost every item used was a naturally available item or something recycled.Items used in the mansion include, pallets, various ventilation bricks, decorative wall blocks, sand, pine cones , wood chip and various plant stems. The mansion will provide a valuable winter refuge for a wide variety of insects and by next spring should attract lots of solitary bees an other important pollinators to take up residence.