Help save our bugs and bees, say the Manx Wildlife Trust this Easter.

A children’s competition, run by Dawn Dickens, the educational officer for the trust, will let kids up the age of 16 create and design special ’Ugly bug bowls’ to help provide habitat for the littlest of creatures in your garden.

There will be a workshop to help to get your bug houses underway, which will cost £10 to join and include a kit to build the bug houses. The kits will include a terracotta bowl, compost, seed mix and a child friendly bee, bug and butterfly chart. Entry into the competition is also included.

This will be on Thursday, April 13, at the Ramsey Garden Centre, Waterloo Road.

Alternatively, if you cant make the competition, you can also enter by buying a kit, also from Ramsey Garden Centre.

Dawn believes that the competition is an ideal way for kids to learn more about the smaller inhabitants of our gardens.

’The competition is a great way to introduce kids and their families to gardening and to a fun and easy way that they can help protect wildlife in their own back garden,’ said Dawn

’Children will get to make their own "Ugly Bug Bowl", a pot with plant seeds to attract insects, creating a mini-bug home in a flowerpot to turn your garden into a paradise for pollinators.’

The competition is open until Saturday, June 29, when all the bug houses will be judged.