The science behind wildlife gardening
Real gardens - Real Science
At the heart of the Buzz Club are our citizen science projects - and our fantastic volunteers, who dig, count, spot, tend and collect data to help answer our questions.
All projects are open to Buzz Club members, as we ask you join up to take part. Membership is free and projects generally are*; it is easier to keep track of who is doing what, this way. Details of how to join are on our Membership page.
See below for details on our open projects, and contact us if you have any questions or comments.
* If a project needs specialist equipment / samples to be sent out / back we may ask participants to cover e.g. postage costs. This will always be clearly stated at the start of the project.
Grow your own food? Use our Garden Shop Calculator to work out how much your food would cost to buy in the shop and how much is ‘owed’ to pollinators.
Ongoing project
New participants welcome
Help us design habitat for breeding hoverflies by creating small ‘lagoons’ out of buckets packed with organic matter and water.
Ongoing project
New participants welcome
Night-flying insects also provide pollination, but we know much less about the effects of this than we do for daytime insects. We're developing a project to look at nocturnal pollinators and need help from Buzz Club members to get things started.
Bee hotels are very popular, but which ones really provide that five-star experience? We want to hear about your experiences as bee-hoteliers - good and bad! (Questionnaire project)
Currently closed
New project coming soon
Finding the best way to make earwig 'hotels', providing habitat for these often-unappreciated beneficial garden residents.
Ongoing project
New project information coming soon
Earwigs provide pest control on trees, but can cause some feeding damage to soft flowers. This project will look into how easily we can move earwigs within a garden - and see if they stay there.
Ongoing project
Currently closed
Are you brilliant at bees, or befuddled by beetles? Magnificent with mimics, or waylaid by wasps?
Test out your insect identification skills with one of our quizzes!
Ongoing project
New participants welcome