How we built our bug hotel

Using RSPB booklet guide on building a bug hotel

Adding a hotel in the garden - like you do

One thing I noticed on our recent trips to the local Primary schools were the talk of forest school schemes and the bug hotels; both of which I believe my son would be very much into, and luck would have it I'd just caught an RSBP post on my Facebook feed on building a bug hotel!

On looking through the RSPB booklet, it is pretty straightforward how to make a bug hotel and all the materials available can be sourced from places such as the woods and, of course, your garden. We built our 'hotel with materials we sourced from the garden, granddad's garden and in the woods.

Great tips and advice on how to give nature a home with the RSPB booket

RSPB giving nature a home booklet

We started off by picking a lovely location at the end of the flower bed just before our decking and our first weekend of construction was digging out the weeds, levelling out the ground and laying down our tiles. It is at this point I realised my son is very much a bossy-boots!! He enjoyed flattening the ground and proceeded to tell me where the tiles were to go, stood on them and let me know which were still 'wobbly' and needed flattening more. I'm calling this our role reversal stage!

Daddy cut a pallet in half; now for anyone who has tackled pallet craft you will know this is not an easy task, but it is very rewarding. It fit snugly on our tile foundation. The newly created ground floor was filled with pine-cones, dried leaves, twigs and moss.

Just finishing the ground floor of our bug hotel

My son showing me how it's done!

Creating the woodland flooring for our bug hotel

Ground Floor of the bug hotel

On the first floor, we added bamboo sticks, logs with holes drilled into them, some great sections of bark and moss which we found on our recent walk in the woods and some coconut shells tucked in the sides which were original bird feeders.

Adding all different materials and layers to our bug hotel

Adding layers to the bug hotel

The penthouse suite has various logs, broken up cardboard and bricks for hold the roof in place. The roof itself was a patchwork of tiles and roofing felt to keep the construction semi-dry and protected from the and strong elements.

We built our hotel over the course of 2 weekends. Some of the 'delays' were due to finding the right materials out on our walks and some of it was due to my son getting bored! He can do approximately an hour of construction and then he wants to go inside and play - which I think is quite an achievement for my 4-year-old, as his attention span for indoor activities is usually 20 minutes.