In the Garden: Pollinator Wall

On a recent trip to the Denver Botanic Gardens, my husband and I came across an insect hotel that completely captivated me. I’d seen so many cute little houses, almost like doll houses, with a room of reeds and a room of assorted logs, perhaps some bricks, or pine cones…  But this! This was no neat dollhouse for bugs.

The wild, woody sweep of branches and bark made me think of tapestry, and I knew instantly that this was a project I wanted to try to replicate. And we have the perfect place—a small section of chain link fence that, once, years ago with another home-owner, housed a dog run, and now holds my pallet-sided compost system. My compost system is not exactly beautiful, so the idea of creating an art project that would benefit bugs and birds while hiding the compost held immediate appeal.

And it turns out that I have been preparing for this particular project for much of my life. I remember, as a young teen, walking in our family’s own 100-acre woods in Virginia and finding what I promptly named the headless horseman. It was the base of an ironwood tree, dead but firmly attached to its roots, and on my next walk in the woods I took along a saw to free the horseman from his rooted home in the banks of Powell’s Creek. That piece has now been with me for a half-century—and was the first that I tied on to the chain link fence to begin my pollinator wall. 

Intricate pieces of bark, collected over the years, soon followed, as did random sticks collected on recent hikes. Some cosmos and sunflowers and yarrow that I had pulled in the fall and layered in my compost bin are now woven in the fence. I even made my husband do a U-turn while driving when I spotted an especially promising branch near the side of the road! I put out a call for dog fur, and tucked it inside a woven basket I had purchased years ago at a thrift store. I love the fact that each time I check on it, a little more has been pulled out by birds to use in nesting. 

My pollinator wall is still very much a work-in-progress. It’s not close to complete yet, and I realize now that it will never be done. It is organic, and in addition to the work now, to hide the chain-link fence, it will require re-tucking and weaving and layering with each new season. But as a way to do my part to try to slow the loss of insects and biodiversity on our planet, it couldn’t be more fun.