Natural Garden
Helping Bumblebees Thrive in Your Garden: Cold Flight, Deep Blooms and the Spring Gap
Why bumblebees are already flying in March, which blooms carry them through the spring gap, and how to build a home for them all year.
Gartenkern Magazine
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200 postsNatural Garden
Help Wild Bees Thrive: Nesting Sites, Bare Soil and Forage
Most wild bees nest in the ground, not in a bug hotel; here is how to give them bare soil, a properly built nesting aid and forage from February to October.
Natural Garden
Build a Sandarium: A Nesting Site for Ground-Nesting Wild Bees
How to build a sunny patch of open sand where mining bees and other ground nesters can dig their brood tunnels.
Natural Garden
A Water Source for Birds and Insects: Cat-Safe, Clean, Lifesaving
How to set up a water source that carries birds and insects through summer: shallow, cat-safe, with an escape aid and cleaned every day.
Natural Garden
Insect Hotels: What Actually Moves In
Why most insect hotels stay pure decoration, and how the right drill holes and the right material get you a nesting aid that wild bees genuinely move into.
Natural Garden
How to Build a Deadwood Pile and a Benjes Hedge: Beetle Cellar and a Living Hedge from Dead Wood
A heap of pruning offcuts becomes a deadwood pile for beetles and hedgehogs, or a Benjes hedge that turns green over the years.
Natural Garden
Attracting Butterflies: Caterpillar Food and Staggered Nectar
A butterfly bush alone won't do it: how to plan both menus, host plants for the caterpillars and nectar from March through October.
Natural Garden
A Garden Pond for Amphibians: Three Zones, a Gentle Slope, No Fish
How to build a natural spring pond where frogs and newts truly settle in: three zones, one gently sloping bank, and deliberately no fish.
Natural Garden
Build a Dry Stone Wall as a Habitat
Stacked without mortar, a dry stone wall becomes a home for lizards, mason bees and joint-dwelling plants.