The Art of Darkness

Garden Spiderweb Frame

July 10th, 2013 by Cobwebs

Garden Spider FrameHere’s an interesting addition to a garden or yard: A wooden frame that encourages spiders to build their web in its center.

They’re reasonably inexpensive (available at Amazon and Newegg, amongst others), but if you’re handy with a hammer you could make one from scrap wood even cheaper.

There’s also a different square design which would be even easier to DIY: It’s pretty much just a wooden picture frame stuck on a post.

Both types say they feature a “spider shelter” to give the spider a place to hide: I assume it’s the triangular bit on the right of the square frame and at the top of the hexagon. All you would need for that is a couple of pieces of thin wood that the spider could get between.

In addition to encouraging spiders to build their webs where you can admire them, the frame would make it much easier to preserve and save them as decorations.

(Incidentally, the manufacturer’s ad copy tries to suggest that the frames are useful for keeping your environment bug-free; I would say that’s just a teensy bit of an overstatement unless you had several dozen of these in the yard. On the other hand, having several dozen of these in the yard would be sort of awesome.)

Spiders, like bats and snakes, are wonderfully helpful and terribly misunderstood creatures. Encouraging them to hang around where they’re welcome seems like an excellent idea.

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