By Jed Lanyon
Healesville Community Garden has installed an insect hotel, thanks to the work of a local artist and community member.
Renowned local artist Clare James designed and sculptured the piece, which was then crafted by Healesville resident Peter Moncrief.
Ms James explained what an insect hotel is and its purpose.
“It’s offering a perfect ecosystem that has different bedding and habitat options for beneficial insects, so the good insects you want in your garden, for them to start living in and breeding in. Particularly over winter, you want to build a place that is safe for them to lay their eggs and be safe from predators.
“If ladybugs lay their eggs in the garden, naturally you might be cutting it up soon and mulching, so their eggs would be destroyed, where an insect hotel is something that stays there and will build up over time. It offers a multi-specied multi-levelled house for insects.”
Ms James said an aim will be to eliminate the use of pest control like snail bait.
“As soon as you can build up a really good base and ecology, you won’t need to use snail bait and the balance tips back towards a healthy ecosystem.”
Healesville Community Garden president Ethne Pfeiffer said the project came about from a small grant from council.
“We’ve got a really strong focus on bringing art into this whole precinct not just the garden itself… We applied for funding to pay artists to work within this space and create artworks that are good for the garden and make sense environmentally.
“It’s functional but it’s also beautiful in creating something using all recycled materials that is going to benefit the garden. We’re really thrilled to work with Clare as our first commissioned artist with the garden.
“She’s a gardener and she understands gardening and is totally connected to the community. We knew she would bring something that was going to be awesome for us and really work for us.”
Ms James said creating the project throughout the Covid-19 restrictions made for some challenges.
“It was hard because we were in lockdown. We weren’t allowed to visit people, we would communicate via pictures on our phones or if I walked the dog past we (Peter) could talk over the fence.
“It was perfect timing for me to find someone like Peter who had some spare time during the lockdown.”
Mr Moncrief lost his job as the pandemic hit, he was responsible for teaching English to refugees and migrants at a university.
“It was a little bit different for me, I was in enforced retirement basically. I was trying to get used to not working so that was a useful part of this project.
“It was very difficult to do that (work) without the face-to-face… I was the first one out the door, but that was sort of okay as I was thinking about retirement at some stage.”
Mr Moncrief turned his attention to helping Ms James with the insect hotel.
“I enjoyed finding bits of wood that fit in and create something different and visual… Clare’s great, she’s always really positive and has good ideas and is supportive.”
Ms James will be running a workshop at the Healesville Community Garden on Saturday 21 November 10.30-11.30am, showing visitors how to make their own hotel beneficial for insects.
Numbers will be limited to ten participants, but a video of the session will be uploaded to the garden’s Facebook page.
For more information, contact: foodpatchart@gmail.com by 19 November to join the workshop. To find out more about FoodPatch Art projects visit: https://foodpatchart.wixsite.com/healesvillegarden
