A recent study has shown that city gardens and allotment could be the best sanctuary for bees and other pollinators, providing a possible solution to their current decline.
The study, published last week in Nature Research, shows that in an urban environment “gardens and allotments (community gardens) are pollinator ‘hotspots’ “. The study goes on to emphasise the high pollinator diversity of allotments in particular.
It’s what we’ve thought all along – that growing your own is a great way to help the decline of the bee population. It’s the balance of flowering plants and weeds that does it – all those courgette flowers, runner bean flowers as well as the herbs and companion plants like lavender, borage and marigolds, attract loads of bees, as do the dandelions, thistles and many other weeds that seem to make their way into our plots!
With this in mind, we’d like to urge as many of you as possible to grow a few veggies and herbs in your gardens, however big or small they may be. If we all have a couple of things growing, then that’s going to make quite a difference to the bees of the world, and it’s great for us too – think of the healthy lifestyle, the fresh veg and herbs you’ll enjoy eating, and all that pollen for the little bees!