Beach House Park Bug Hotel

Yesterday we helped build a bug hotel in Worthing's Beach House Park as part of the BugCycle project run by new community organisation Worthing Wildlife in partnership with established community arts group Creative Waves and Sussex Wildlife Trust. BugCycle aims to promote wildlife and encourage biodiversity through creating new habitats for wildlife in this much loved Worthing park.

On a drizzly Sunday afternoon we joined a group of hardy locals of all ages to build the first Beach House Bug Hotel. A bug hotel (wildlife stack or mini-beast mansion) is a man-made shelter for insects made from recycled materials which mimics natural habitats by creating lots of small spaces, nooks and crevices of different sizes for insects to nest in. 

We used old pallets, bricks, rotting bark, tufts of moss, dead leaves, stones, broken pottery, branches with holes drilled in and hollow bamboo canes to create an ideal environment for insects. Our bug hotel will attract a wide variety of invertebrates including; solitary bees, woodlice, woodlice spiders, earwigs, ladybirds, beetle larvae, funnel web spiders and centipedes.

   On walking home through the park later that day my daughter spotted a bee leaving the hotel. It's heartening to discover it's inhabited already!

In other news: the first buds have appeared on the BugCycle willow dome we helped build last month. What a joy to see growth and new life in this corner of the park.

Building a Living Willow Dome

The first few days of February's half term holiday were spent helping to build a living willow dome in Worthing's Beach House Park. This family-friendly project was part of BugCycle an initiative run by community arts organisation Creative Waves in partnership with Worthing Wildlife. BugCycle aims to bring wildlife, planting, crafts and colour to an underused space in this beautiful park.

Willow crafting team extraordinaire Ganesh and Elaine of Creative Willow led the construction of the dome and taught us how to make bird feeders, stars and living willow pencils. Children were encouraged to decorate the area with chalked drawings and crafts. Happily the BugCycle team provided hot drinks and biscuits which nicely took the edge off the winter chill as our kids were having too much fun to want to leave!  

Beach House Park is a place I walk through every day – with tree lined paths and herbaceous borders it's a haven for birds and wildlife as well as the site for Nancy Price's Pigeon War Memorial. For years the park was famously home to the Bowls England National Championships, an event that packed out the park every summer. Controversially this flagship tournament moved to Leamington Spa last year amid local mutterings that Worthing Council should have done more to hold onto what had been an acclaimed and lucrative event for our town for over 40 years. The loss of the tournament (and revenue) has already signalled changes in the park with the vast, colourful flower beds that ran through the central avenue being dug out and replaced by large green tubs of low maintenance shrubs. While these are still pretty they're not a patch on the spectacular floral displays that greeted visitors to the park during the Bowls Championship years.

BugCycle hopes to breathe life into neglected areas of Beach House Park again and I'm sure will help attract many new visitors – human as well as insect! I look forward to seeing the project grow, especially the living willow dome.

Seeking Occupants of Interplanetary Craft at Earthship Brighton

It's been a beautiful sunny week in Sussex, a fine start to the school holidays and a complete contrast to last year's bitter Easter holiday weather. On Wednesday we travelled by train to Stanmer Park, a nature reserve with open downland and woods on the edge of Brighton. Our event horizon was Earthship Brighton a sustainable 'green' building constructed using waste car tyres, wine bottles and recycled materials. It's the first Earthship to be built in England and has been designed to provide its own heat, electricity, water and food. Our walk there took us through wide open spaces, blossom heavy orchards and through the grounds of Stanmer Manor where we stopped for a picnic. Continuing uphill we passed allotments, a forest of roughly carved wooden faces (with eyes that followed us) and getting warmer, reached Stanmer Community Farm.

The Earthship was closed but we explored the outside of this intriguing building and its grounds which resemble a glorious eco-friendly Teletubby Land. Heading back downhill we sensibly took a detour to Stanmer Park Tearooms and refuelled with tea and cake before hiking back to Falmer Station.

Absolutely Fabulous Flora

Fabulous Flora is a visual and fragrant delight. Tucked away in Warwick Lane (just off Worthing's Warwick Street), here you'll find artfully arranged flowers displayed in vintage pots and mid-century vases; fine ceramics, ornaments and retro treasures for sale – including a range of Ivy Arch toys and lavender bags.

Fabulous Flora was dreamt up by the unstoppable Donna Hogarth, known for her exquisite vintage themed wedding flower arrangements and MAKE Fabulous Events. This blossoming boutique also offers floristry workshops (with cake!) starting in May. Fabulous Flora is a breath of fresh air and simply the best new thing in town. I hope it encourages more creative and independent shops to start up in Worthing too.

Fabulous Flora can be found at 9 Warwick Lane (off Warwick Street) Worthing, and is open Wednesday to Saturday.

1920s seed packet lavender bags for the Spring Equinox

On the eve of the Spring Equinox, here's the new Ivy Arch range of lavender bags. They're cut from a piece of cotton printed with 1920s seed packets from the Card Seed Co. of Fredonia NY. This beautiful fabric was designed by Holly Holderman for Lakehouse Dry Goods. I've backed the pouches with olive green polka dot cotton and filled them with French lavender.
     Some of them are on sale now in my Etsy shop and I'll be adding more seed varieties in the next couple of weeks.

North by Northwest of Worthing

On what felt like the last real day of summer, windfree and sun shining we took the 700 bus to Roundstone Farm. Spent three hours picking berries, pulling carrots from the ground, played hide-and-seek in the forest of sweetcorn and lay down in a field of monumental bright orange pumpkins.

We rode to the furthest reaches of the vast farm in a trailer towed by tractor in the company of a Slovak family with pram full of produce. The driver announced the next stop ‘Red Onions’ on his tannoy system.

Returned home with three carrier bags of fruit and veg including four courgette flowers worth their weight in gold and it all came to less than £10. The Soup Bible beckons.