Armitage insect houses

We made these fine looking insect houses at Armitage. Two Y6 boys did all the work, cutting the frames to size, filling them with different materials and then adding some wire mesh to hold everything in. It took a while but the results were worth it.

Insect hotel with a green roof

When we finished the insect hotel at Armitage it looked, well, a bit unfinished. It's just a nice height so we stuck a mini green roof on top and have planted it up with a variety of herbs. It's in the early years playground so they're already combining looking for creepy crawlies with sampling the textures, smells and tastes of the herbs.

Red Rose Forest gave us some advice on the green roof based on their experience from the Green Streets project. 

St John's signs

I really like these signs that Gardening Club members at St John's have made on a couple of wet and cold Tuesday afternoons.

We used bits of old wooden pallet, sanded down and then they got to work with coloured pens. We've used linseed oil to waterproof the signs which will go up in the greenhouse, around the insect hotel they made and in the courtyard.

Rosie, by the way, is the school rabbit.

Making an insect hotel

I don't like calling them "bug hotels", they say "bug" in the US and I think we have enough US culture here already. Anyway, we've started to make one at Armitage. The nearby construction site were kind enough to donate some pallets, bricks and pipes. In fact I nipped over to ask and half an hour later a mini digger came rumbling round the corner loaded with materials we could use.

The pallets needed a bit of sanding and I removed some nails before pupils got to work filling it with 5 Star insect facilities.  A great job for younger children this. Reception and Year 1 children scoured the school grounds for twigs and branches and then put these in the pipes or just scattered them in the pallets. We simply put one pallet on the ground, filled it up and then put the second one on and so on.

The top will be a green roof planted with drought resistant herbs such as rosemary, sage and thyme giving us another precious growing area.  Now I just need to go back to the building site and see if they've got any old scaffolding planks.

It will be interested to see what moves in.