Creating an “insect hotel” has been on my to-do list for a while now. The idea is a simple one: create a habitat for beneficial bugs to hibernate and breed in. The result should be more of the good bugs, leading to less of the bad bugs.

The great blog post on insect hotels by Inspiration Green was my starting point. This showed the huge diversity of shapes, sizes and materials of insect hotels.

My starting materials were a few pieces of well-aged firewood, and some handy bamboo garden edging from Bunnings.

The outside frame was made from cut-down 90x45mm pine, still left over from the renovation. The wood and bamboo was cut to 90mm long to match.

The two slow bits were drilling all the holes (6-9mm in size), and then gluing it all together.

The result is not just useful, but beautiful (I think so at least). It looks great on the side fence of our house. And as it’s visible from the street, it’s yet another item of interest for passerbyers.

The really encouraging thing is that a few of the holes have already been filled — so hopefully this means some friendly bugs have already made a home!