Food & Shelter for Your Wildlife
Sunday 18th February 2024 – 09:30 – 3 pm
The Pavilion in the Park, Victory Park, Cainscross, Stroud. GL5 4JE
We human beings like houses, warm coats, and sunshades, so why not provide shelter for as many animals and insects as possible in your garden. We will look beyond bird boxes, feeders and insect hotels at how we can use and create homes and provide food in a natural way for many different insects and mammals in our gardens, without taking away the space we like to use for our own enjoyment and activities.
Objectives of the Workshop
You will leave with
- The lifecycles of some of our common garden wildlife and how we can provide what it needs
- More knowledge of the insects we need to protect and what we can do to achieve that with habitat and food
- An initial design addressing wildlife shelter in your garden and the principles you need to work with
- Food through the seasons
- A community of people you can tap into for support and advice
Workshops Booking
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Workshop Outline
During the day the information and techniques we share will apply to all sizes of gardens and we will help you think through what is specifically relevant for you. Weather permitting, you will be able to get out in the garden and start doing some things you’ve planned to provide and create in your wildlife garden.
There is lots of information to get through. We will divide the day up with some practical exercises and time to work on your own garden plan.
The Plan for the Day
09:30 We suggest arriving before 0930 as there will still be parking – by 1000 the rugby club starts arriving.
Opening hellos and explanations of what we are doing and why we are doing it.
10.00 – General Principles of Wildlife and sharing our gardens – We’ll start with you and your garden, how you use it and what you want to create. We’ll share some of the general principles you need to think about and a few of the fundamentals that you need to know. It doesn’t matter if you are just starting out or you are highly ambitious you will start in this session to think through what you have and what you want to achieve.
Lunch and chat – bring your own – hot and cold drinks provided as part of the day – cakes and goodies on sale.
13.30 – A deep dive into the world of insects and their lifecycles. Most of us can rattle off about 10 – 15 insects we might find in our garden. Some of you will know more and some of you will be able to identify specific insects within the species; however, for many of us there is a world in our garden which we want to support and encourage and it’s time to find out more about them. To provide them with the shelter they need we must understand their lifecycle – who they are, what they do and what support they need from us.
14:30 So what are you going to do or not do? In our final session you will design and draw your garden and plan what to do and when to do it. We will encourage you to reuse, recycle and repurpose and not to spend lots of money unless you want to. We will explore ways in which we can support each other by plant swops, creating cuttings, and even help each other in our gardens when a job requires more than one person.
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