A festive treat

The 2023 Keep Scotland Beautiful ‘It’s Your Neighbourhood and Beautiful Scotland’ gathering took place in early December, and once again a range of fantastic projects were vying for prizes in this NatureScot sponsored pollinator-friendly award.  What’s more, there were entries from our widest-ever geographic spread.

It’s never an easy award to judge, simply because of the consistently good quality of the entrants. However, this year Juliette Camburn, Senior Officer for Community Initiatives at Keep Scotland Beautiful, rewarded all entrants a community seed pack and a certificate of recognition to ensure everyone’s efforts were acknowledged.

Yorkhill Greenspaces found a place on our virtual podium, and with their seductively solid entry were just a whisker away from recording an unprecedented hat-trick of triumphs. Their list of positive actions reads like a ‘How to best serve pollinators’ guide. 

In amongst a welter of positive activity they promoted both pesticide and peat-free gardening, sustainable green space management, planted pollinator-friendly perennials in three parks including 500 native wildflowers in Yorkhill Park with the help of 100 eager pupils from Glasgow Gaelic High School. The busy team also created a new ‘Beds for Bees’ flower bed in Overnewton Park with pollinator-friendly perennials provided by RePollinate, filled six new sensory garden planters with herbs and pollinator-friendly flowers, and introduced 25m of native flowering hedging at Cherry Park.

In a delightful departure from planting, they created two solitary bee nesting banks in Yorkhill Park, and as if that weren’t enough, they planted over 1,300 pollinator-friendly spring bulbs (Snowdrops, Winter Aconites, Bluebells, Spring crocuses, Autumn crocuses, Grape hyacinths, Snake’s-head fritillaries and alliums). Once more they participated in a number of surveys and they collected yellow rattle seed in Yorkhill Park for sowing elsewhere. Remarkably, this is just a selection of some of the actions they carried out.

Little wonder that Juliette and I are looking to persuade the dynamic Glasgow group to head up a seminar on what community groups can do, how best to succeed, and challenges to look out for.  Watch this space.

A new group scooped second prize … Growing Together from nearby Drumchapel in Glasgow. 

They confidently transformed a barren patch of land (which previously was effectively just a bland grassy slope), repurposed eight old council planters — enhancing them with a mix of astutely selected pollinator-friendly flora, planted 6 cherry trees and a community orchard within a walled area. For a new group this is quite an arrival.

The Drumchapel group were delighted to be successful in an application to be a RePollinate group and, on the back of that encouragement, planted up lots of native bee-friendly plants and flowers and created a small pond. To garner local support they installed a noticeboard telling the story of the orchard, and encouraged local nurseries and schools to help plant up everything required, all whilst spreading the word about the importance of pollinators.

The winning group, however, came from the Scottish Borders in the shape of Green St Boswells. The initial aim of thissmall group was simply to improve and transform their village centre. However, motivated by Buglife ‘B-lines’ and their ‘Pollinators Along The Tweed’ projects, they ultimately created a variety of habitats to support insects.

How did they do it?  Along with their primary school’s ‘Parent Friends Partnership’ they created a wildflower meadow, native hedge tunnel, and community micro-orchard within the school grounds. They also sowed a mini-meadow around seating at the Village Green, which has now become a popular place to linger and take in the view.  Now they are working with the Local Authority to change the grass mowing regime over a wider area to encourage a variety of habitats. 

An awareness of meeting the seasonal needs of pollinators was a huge plus in the St Boswells raft of actions. They have done so with yellow rattle and spring flowering bulbs to help fill the hungry gap for early pollinators. Their nearby new self-watering planters have striking perennial and annual plants designed for a long flowering season and they have especially noted a lot of pollinators visiting these.

In Ayrshire the Catrine Community Group have added the name Action Plan to their title, and you can see why. They vigorously promote natural gardening with the aim of cleaning up their village and helping nature.  In 2023 they started a Garden club, took part in the RHS Big Seed Sow, raised awareness of edible flowers and flowers beneficial for pollinators, along with introducing the healthy concepts of natural pest control, companion planting, and organic gardening. All-in-all a solid body of work.

Earlston In Bloom caught our eye too. They are seeing quite a bit of new development in their area, and are trying to attract bees and butterfly pollinators to public borders and greenspaces by planting the likes of buddleia, achillea, rudbeckia, phlox, aquilegia and lavender. They also planted crocus and snowdrop for early nectar across the village, and beside the War Memorial and popular village green introduced sedum and perennial helianthus for autumn. That successional planting is a fantastic boost for many pollinators.

No pesticides are used in the Earlston project, and they have persuaded the council grass-cutting team to draw back from areas with red campion, yarrow, field geranium, purple vetch, cow parsley, and knapweed. To bolster pollinator’s chances, they have also encouraged long vegetation to potentially accommodate bumble bee nests, seeds for foraging birds, and next year’s flowers. 

From Aberdeen came news of successful work by Fresh Community Wellness. In their community garden, they created habitat and food sources for insects and pollinators in a number of ways. It’s been a journey. The garden initially started as a piece of land with only grass, which was cut regularly by the council. The group have now taken over the grass-cutting, altered the mowing regime, and deliberately left some areas to rewild allowing plants other than grass to grow naturally, whilst maintaining grass pathways in the garden from routes naturally taken from walkers and visitors to the garden. During May they backed the “No Mow May” campaign to allow pollinators to feed on the dandelions in the grass.

In just over two years they have planted a plethora of flowering species, over 3,000 bulbs, 300 trees, and aim to introduce a hedgerow to entice pollinators with potential shelter and nesting sites. From a donation of granite stones, they built a drystone wall which is also attracting insects to the garden. Two years in and they have already noted an increase in the variety of butterflies and bees on the site.

The Walled Garden of Raasay was another eye-catching entry. Fabulous volunteers helped the part-time gardener make a community-owned space a fantastic environment for both humans and pollinators to enjoy. The aims were mixed, and included following organic methods to grow seasonal fruit, vegetables, salad and flowers to sell. With areas of grass left un-mown, flowers planted amongst the vegetables as well as in their own beds, and green manure providing large areas of red clover and phacelia, the garden literally buzzes. The Walled Garden provides a beautiful, nourishing, relaxing and therapeutic space to share all year round with local residents and visitors alike — whether large or small and with or without wings.

I’ve often enjoyed visiting Ninewells Community Garden and I’d recommend it to everyone reading this piece. Biodiversity loss and climate change are priorities in the garden, and 2023 saw a concerted effort to reverse the decline in pollinator numbers.  Interventions already made are maintained; the sensory garden, bug hotel, wildflower meadows, flowering shrubs, children’s education sessions, bird feeding area and pesticides ban are all embedded in the culture of this garden. A welcome motto here is ‘embrace weeds’, especially dandelions. It’s a garden that charms and nourishes in equal measure.

There was an inspiring entry from Victoria Gardens in Dundee. The opening paragraph of their entry neatly summarises their ethos. “Our community organisation has transformed an underutilised bowling green into a thriving haven for both people and pollinators. Through our dedication to sustainability, and the environment, we have cultivated a vibrant community garden that encapsulates our commitment to nurturing biodiversity while promoting food production.”

One of the garden’s distinguishing features is the deliberate intertwining of food crops with pollinator-friendly plantings. By strategically integrating flowers such as calendula, French marigold, and nasturtium among vegetable beds, the group not only enhances the aesthetic appeal, but in doing so provides essential habitats and foraging opportunities for pollinators. Here’s another group that could well pass on valuable tips at any seminar.

The folks at Grow 73 are to be commended on another excellent entry. For the past two years they have been developing a Bee Line in Rutherglen and Cambuslang. Their idea being to develop little green oasis of nectar rich plants to help pollinators feed, especially in an urban setting. Each of these ‘pollinator pockets’ are placed near a group they have partnered with and who are responsible for maintaining it. What a shining example of partnership working and bold ambition. Eugenie and her colleagues certainly give the impression of going from strength to strength, and their stated aim is to expand beyond the South Lanarkshire council area.

We could go on. The Black Door Shop in Glasgow provided a fantastic entry full of pollinator friendly actions such as planting flowering trees and shrubs, providing a constant supply of nectar and pollen all year round, and working with local cubs to enhance their area. 

Suffice to say all of the entries were individually excellent, and collectively formed a sense of communities being a driving force for pollinators up and down the country.

It is hard not to draw the same conclusion we reached last year — that in a gathering of this kind, everyone’s a winner, and pollinators the major beneficiaries.  All of our entries have been sent NatureScot community seed packs to help them keep up the good work. We know they will use them well.

NHS Scotland – Greenspace and Pollinators

As we battle the triple planetary emergencies of biodiversity loss, climate change and pollution, the way we use our public estates has never been more sharply under the spotlight. As a major employer, provider of a vital public service, and landowner and manager, NHSScotland has a crucial role to play. 

As a landowner across 14 territorial healthboards, the NHS can clearly be an important nationwide partner in helping to deliver good outcomes for nature. NHS greenspaces are highly valued and serve a number of complimentary purposes, from providing therapeutic and food growing spaces, through to offering space for nature and providing an attractive aesthetic backdrop for visitors and local communities.

In 2022, the Scottish Government published the NHSScotland Climate Emergency and Sustainability Strategy: 2022 -2026. The Strategy outlines NHSScotland’s aims to achieve a net-zero health service by 2040 and contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The key word in this ambition is ‘sustainability’, with buildings and land, travel, goods and services, and communities, all forming elements of a suite of priority areas.

A Natural Health Service programme led by NatureScot, with input from Scottish Foresty and Public Health Scotland, is one of the more obvious recent developments that has cleverly harnessed the value of greenspaces. Four initial areas (Lanarkshire, Dundee, North Ayrshire and Highland) established Green Health Partnership programmes. They participated in a scheme which has celebrated nature-based health promotion projects such as health walks, green gyms and community growing whilst actively encouraging everyday contact with nature. Being outdoors is good for our health, enjoying nature likewise.

For those of us who look at these developments whilst wearing a ‘What’s in it for pollinators?” hat, the news is good. The work will create national guidance for positive greenspace management and develop cohesive biodiversity action plans. 

Mapping and analysing the NHS green estate was a first step in assessing a route map to helping nature. A National Biodiversity and Greenspace Group was formed to support the implementation of the strategy and act as a forum to support action for this area. A Grassland management report has been identified as a priority and there are plans for further national greenspace management tools in the future This meant some upskilling of staff in biodiversity-friendly greenspace management, providing support in a period of change, and raising awareness of the considerable benefits new management regimes for estate  grassland could bring. 

And, of course, as well as working to help nature on the NHS estate, it remained vital not to lose sight of the immense therapeutic value and health and wellbeing benefits of the green estate.

Delivering change can be challenging in any walk of life, particularly so where existing and perhaps long-standing arrangements are altered.  However, in engaging with communities, working collaboratively with colleagues, and identifying external funding opportunities, the work progresses well whilst aligning well with other national agendas.

The outcomes will be encouraging news for nature. Local Biodiversity Action Plans will be integral to ensuring changes on the ground are in the best interests, nature networks will be created, and climate adaptation will be equally factored into projects.

Delivering Scotland’s Pollinator Strategy is something that NatureScot cannot do alone. We work with a range of partners to achieve positive changes to help pollinators thrive in Scotland. How the public estate is used is a vital cog in the nature wheel. The emphasis on biodiversity friendly management of the NHS green estate is fantastic news for pollinators, and will contribute greatly to goals we have around nature networks, green corridors, connectivity and stepping stones – all essential if we are to build healthy pollinator populations.

Acknowledgement: With grateful thanks for Jenn Wiggins (Sustainability Manager, Biodiversity & Adaptation / NHS Scotland Assure) and Anne Lamb (Sustainability Manager, Greenspace & Biodiversity / NHS Assure).

Images (C) ERZ, James Morrison Street, Glasgow G1 5PE

Find out more: there are several pages, short films, and Project Case Studies on the NatureScot website featuring news on making the most of the NHS outdoors estate for health and wellbeing.

Find out more: The Green Health Partnership

How the mighty have fallen

By Athayde Tonhasca

“And they shall cover the face of the earth, that one cannot be able to see the earth: and they shall eat the residue of that which is escaped, which remaineth unto you from the hail, and shall eat every tree which groweth for you out of the field: And they shall fill thy houses, and the houses of all thy servants…”  Exodus 10:5-6, King James Version.

The Bible never sounded as prescient to Americans and Canadians as in the years 1873-1877. On summer days, farmers in the prairie regions watched with alarm and hopelessness as black clouds formed in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. These clouds would eventually grow and descend to lower ground, hiding the sun in the middle of the day and filling the air with the sound of millions of scissors snipping away. The clouds contained no rain, hail or sand: they were made of locusts, billions of them (locusts are gregarious forms of grasshoppers). In 1875, Dr Albert Child of the U.S. Signal Corps timed a swarm flying over Plattsmouth, Nebraska, for five days straight, and telegraphed nearby towns for similar sightings. Dr Child estimated the swarm to be about 3,000 km long and 180 km wide (Second Report of the U.S. Entomological Commission, 1880).  That’s equivalent to 27 million tonnes of moving biomass.

A swarm of locusts in Madagascar, tiny in comparison to the ones befalling 1800’s North America © Michel Lecoq, Wikimedia commons.

Inevitably the locusts would come down to earth, devouring any plant in sight in a few hours; the farmers’ hard labour, mainly in the form of maize and wheat crops, would be wiped out. Here’s how Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957), of Little House on the Prairie fame, described her childhood experience with locusts in Minnesota in 1874: “Their thin, large wings gleamed and glittered. The rasping whirring of their wings filled the whole air and they hit the ground and the house with the noise of a hailstorm. Laura tried to beat them off. Their claws clung to her skin and her dress. They looked at her with bulging eyes, turning their heads this way and that… Grasshoppers covered the ground, there was not one bare bit to step on. Laura had to step on grasshoppers and they smashed squirming and slimy under her feet … ‘The wheat!’ Pa shouted.”  (On the Banks of Plum Creek, 1937). 

The protagonist of such a nightmare: the Rocky Mountain locust (Melanoplus spretus).

The Rocky Mountain locust, a feeding juggernaut © Julius Bien (1826-1909), Wikimedia Commons.

Locust outbreaks were nothing new, but Americans and Canadians were in for an onslaught. These racing feeding machines had a devastating impact: vast areas of agricultural land became barren, and many families gave up farming and fled to cities; in Canada, the lack of fresh vegetables caused outbreaks of scurvy, a disease caused by vitamin C deficiency; in both countries, army troops were mobilized to feed thousands of families. In 1877, the Minnesota Legislature passed the ‘grasshopper draft’:  all able-bodied men from 12 to 65 years old should gather locusts for at least one day: failure to comply could result in fines or 10 days in jail. The law made no difference to the Rocky Mountain locust.

Kansas farmers battling locusts © Henry Worrall (1825-1902), Wikimedia Commons.

But then, after the appalling rapacious raids in the late 1800s, the Rocky Mountain locust started to wane. Swarms became intermittent and smaller, and by the turn of the century there were no more locusts to be seen. The last two confirmed specimens were collected in Canada in 1902. In less than 30 years since Dr Albert Child reported the entomological version of Attila the Hun crossing the skies of Nebraska, the Rocky Mountain locust had disappeared from the face of the Earth. Nowadays only a few specimens can be found in museum collections.

The abrupt extinction of the Rocky Mountain locust is one of greatest ecological puzzles of all times. Many explanations have been proposed, but today’s most accepted theory is that humans unknowingly bumped it off. Which is a great irony, considering the futile efforts of farmers, scientists and governments in killing it. During their grasshopper form, that is, before multiplying, swarming and making a nuisance of themselves, Rocky Mountain locusts gathered along a few river valleys where females laid their eggs in the soil. These fertile riparian habitats attracted settlers as well, who little by little altered the newly occupied pristine habitats by turning the soil over with their ploughs, and by bringing in herds of cows and horses to feed on the nutritious grass – who would trample and churn the soil while they were at it. These disturbances destroyed the insect’s eggs and immature forms developing underground, quickly sealing the fate of the Rocky Mountain locust. 

Another animal once blackened the American skies with its sheer numbers: the passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius). This migrating pigeon was believed to be the most abundant bird in North America, numbering from 3 to 5 billion. French-American artist, naturalist and ornithologist John James Audubon (1785-1851) described a passenger pigeon migration in 1813:

“The air was literally filled with Pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse; the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow, and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose…. Before sunset I reached Louisville, distant from Hardensburgh fifty-five miles. The Pigeons were still passing in undiminished numbers and continued to do so for three days in succession”.

Passenger pigeon hunt in Louisiana © Smith Bennett, Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 1875. Wikimedia Commons.

Despite its mindboggling numbers, the passenger pigeon was no match for the war waged against it – relentless hunting on an industrial scale and destruction of its habitats increasingly depleted its populations. By the 1850s, alarm bells started to go off, but with no practical results. In 1857, a bill was presented to the Ohio State Legislature for the passenger pigeon’s protection, but a Select Committee ruled against it, noting that the bird was “Wonderfully prolific… no ordinary destruction can lessen them”. By the 1900s, the pigeon had disappeared in the wild, and only a few specimens hung on in captivity. From 1909 to 1912, the American Ornithologists’ Union offered US$1,500 to anyone reporting a nesting colony of passenger pigeons, but the reward was never collected. In 1914, Martha, the last known passenger pigeon, died at the Cincinnati Zoo. She was about 29 years old and had never laid a fertile egg. 

Martha in 1912. After her death, her body was mounted in a display case with the notation: “MARTHA, last of her species, died at 1 p.m., 1 September 1914, age 29, in the Cincinnati Zoological Garden. EXTINCT” © Enno Meyer, Wikimedia Commons.

In On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin noted a relationship between species abundance and the size of their geographic range, and suggested that these factors were important for species’ success: “Who can explain why one species ranges widely and is very numerous, and why another allied species has a narrow range and is rare? Yet these relations are of the highest importance, for they determine the present welfare, and, as I believe, the future success and modification of every inhabitant of this world.” Indeed, low abundance and restricted range (both expressions of rarity) are considered the main factors in extinction risk, and are the leading criteria for Red List species assessments by The International Union for Conservation of Nature. And yet, two species once widespread and unimaginably abundant, are gone forever. 

As far as we know, neither the Rocky Mountain locust nor the passenger pigeon had anything to do with pollination. All the same, their tales suggest any species could tip over into oblivion once it is pushed too far. It could happen to a pollinator near you.