Outside at home

Top tips for Bolton: Outside at Home

What you can do in your own garden!

How to do a Bug Hunt @ Home

Don shows you how to do a bug hunt at home! All you need is an old food tray or container to collect bits of old leaves, sticks and soil, give them a shake and see what comes out.

I Spy Challenge!

Natural History curator Don has set you a challenge to find these things by looking out of your window, in the garden or whilst out for your daily exercise! How many can you spy?

 The Hedgehog @ Home

About this time of year hedgehogs are coming out of hibernation and starting to get more active. If you’ve got the right kind of garden you may be lucky enough to see hedgehogs going about their business. Watch this guide to making your garden welcoming to these prickly friends.

Watch out for some covert footage of a hedgehog exploring a Westhoughton garden!

Want to find out more? This resource has some great websites you can visit.

Pressing Plants and our Herbarium Collection

Have you ever pressed your own flowers or plants? Drying them out is a great way to preserve them and they can be kept for hundreds of years. Here's a few examples from our 60,000 specimens and a short guide to starting your own collection.

You can find out more about collecting wild plants from the Plantlife website.

Studying Insects

It's National Insect Week and we'll be taking a closer look at these wonderful creatures.

We'll start off by finding out what an entomologist (someone lucky enough to study these amazing beasts!) does...

Mini Beasts for National Insect Week 2020

How many Mini Beasts can you find when you're out and about?

Find out more about National Insect Week.