Make an insect hotel

There’s no design template for building an insect hotel. It depends on what materials you have, which should be natural and preferably recycled. You can leave appropriate plant litter about your garden and your insect friends will find it. Or, do a purpose build with an old wooden box – or make your own – to house hotel rooms that can consist of:

• Logs with holes drilled at various widths and depths from 3-10cm. Don’t drill all the way through, though, or you’ll create drafts.

• Bamboo culms with nodes – or interior walls – still intact.

• Holes drilled into untreated timber offcuts.

• Stones.

• Twigs and sticks.

• Banksia or pine cones, clumps of gumnuts.

• Bark.

• Terracotta or clay tiles or crumbling bricks.

• Shredded cardboard, straw or coconut fibre. NOTE Don’t use treated timber – the chemicals repel insects.

Location, location, location

Position your hotel so it faces all-day sun if you live in a cool climate and morning sun in warmer and tropical areas. Give it a roof to protect your guests and their rooms from rain.

LOG JAMS ARE GREAT Make an entrance, with different-sized holes for different creatures.

FROM TRASH TO FLASH Anything natural can be re-used as bespoke accommodation.

FOR BACKPACKERS Stack sawn-up culms of bamboo in the hollow of a log.

DOING THE ROUNDS Save your tin cans and fill them with cones, sticks or bark.