Earth Day Virtual Family Event – The Bugs in My Backyard!
Earth Day is here! And even though we can’t gather together, we have created a very special Virtual event that the whole family can participate in from home!
Learn about some of the bugs you may be able to find when walking in the woods or in your very own backyard. Jeff Gillman, Director of UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens will introduce you to some incredible insects – some you can get up close with and some you need to give space to but all very interesting!
You can celebrate Earth Day by creating with Wendy, our Education Coordinator and make your very own Bug Hotel from materials you can find around home! Place your hotel in your yard and see who comes to visit or even stay! Make sure to #unccgardensearthday so we can see what you have created to help the small creatures we share our yards and our planet with!
All links are live NOW !! Click on the underlined link to be taken to the printable or the video!
Your FREE virtual Earth Day event includes:
Video: Insects at the Botanical Gardens with Jeff Gillman
Free printable instruction sheet for Bug Hotel Craft
Video: Craft with Me! Bug Hotel with Wendy Wilson
Free printable Bug Identification sheet
Thanks for celebrating Earth Day with us!!
If you would like to leave a donation to help support the Gardens’ educational programming, click here.
Before the event you will want to start looking around for recyclables to use as well as natural elements in your backyard or when you go for a walk in your neighborhood. To prepare you will need: an empty, rinsed out milk carton and several kinds of natural materials such as pieces of bark, pine cones, sweet gum balls, dried grasses, sticks, twigs, pebbles and stones and other dried loose materials. These next things are nice to have but not necessary: tree cookies (slices of tree branches), dried moss (please do not use living moss!), plastic straws (rinsed for re-use, no need to buy new ones – it is Earth Day after all!), bamboo lengths (again like straws for the tube structure) and perhaps broken pieces of a terra cotta pot if you have them.
Don’t worry if you can’t find everything on the list! There should be plenty of sticks on the ground after our last rain storm and if all you can find are sticks the bugs will be happy with those too. Happy collecting and we can’t wait to meet back here with you on Earth Day!
We would love to see what you create! Post your own Earth Day Bug Hotel pictures and tag us at #unccgardensearthday
We may feature your creations on our social media pages!