The Royal Horticultural Society and The Wildlife Trusts are urging people to get involved in Wild About Gardens Week (September 15-21, 2014) to help protect pollinating insects over winter.

Combining forces to provide people with a winter-survival guide for the UK’s 1,500 species of pollinating insects, the RHS and TWT are asking gardeners to provide much-needed places in which pollinators can spend winter, and to plan their garden for the year ahead in an effort to offer vital pollen and nectar-rich food.

And they’ve made their suggestions even easier to carry out by providing downloadable printable packs and sheets which will have you heading back out into the autumnal outdoors with your own mini beasts, instruction sheets in hand…

The Pollinator Protection Pack includes information on what is a pollinator?, what pollinators need, a pollinators spotters sheet with different butterflies, moths, bees and flies, a selection of 30 varieties of plant that are good sources of food for them and details about the #wildaboutgardens organisers themselves.

It also includes pages on How to make an insect hotel, How to build a bug hotel and Grow your own mini garden meadow but, if you want to get straight on to the hands-on activities, you can print these off separately too.  You might want to download the pollinator pack afterwards anyway though as pages 10 and 11 will tell you about “just a few of the different creatures you might find burrowing, hiding and overwintering in your hotel”.

There are also downloads available for Tips for organising an event and ideas and advice on wildlife-gardening activities including leaflets on making compost, making and installing bat boxes and furry furniture.

Do you love finding printables on the internet? Do you have particular favourites? Or have you featured some on your own blog? Email karen.malpass@inkfactory.com with your links and we may be able to feature them in a future post.