Interest in growing your own food blossomed during the pandemic and the benefits that people gained from time spent on allotments – better physical and mental health, saving money on food, making new friends – have meant the interest is still there. If only supply could catch up with demand.
In Ireland and the UK, waiting lists for allotment space are expressed in terms of months and even years. Oscar Wilde said that if something is worth having, it’s worth waiting for. But even he might find his patience stretched if he had to wait years to grow his own food.
Dublin has seven local authority allotment sites, but like the one site in Cork (with 52 plots) and the two sites in Galway (with 77 plots) there are waiting lists in place and a warning that “it may be a matter of time before an allotment comes available.” Compare this to cities like Bristol (112 allotment sites) and Newcastle (3,000 allotment plots in use).
The Irish Government has specified allotments as a key part of the All Ireland Pollinator Plan 2015-2020 but it is local councils which must allocate the land and they don’t seem to be in any particular rush.
But what do allotments have to do with our pollinators? Dave Goulson, author and passionate gardener for bees, writes this about allotments in his latest book, Silent Earth. “A recent study from Bristol University found that allotments had the highest insect diversity of any urban habitat – higher than gardens, cemeteries or city parks, higher even than city nature reserves.”
Goulson speculates that this is due to the huge variety and diversity found in allotments sites (different crops and flowers, old sheds, occasional ponds, compost heaps, etc) alongside the minimal pesticide use. Funny that. Turns out that when you can see your food growing, you tend not to soak it in toxic chemicals.
So the popularity of allotment gardening is extremely good news for insects – a term which not only includes bees but also beetles, grasshoppers, ants, flies and moths, to name a few. Studies are showing a dismaying decline in insect populations and if you were worried about climate change, just wait until you hear about a world without insects. (Listen here to Dave Goulson on the Animal Friendly podcast).
Teeming insect life tends to attract birds: while some birds are happy to bulk out their diet with seeds and nuts, baby birds only eat insects. Their parents can’t raise them without a steady diet of the tiny delicacies, meaning that allotments are a bird-spotters paradise.
So allotments do triple duty; feeding us, our six-legged and our feathered friends all at the same time. They’re the bee’s knees, the cat’s meow and the frog’s eyebrows all rolled into one. At least if you have a lot of 1920s American flappers hanging around your patch.
Before those partying zoozers and their goofs came along, the phrase bee’s knees used to mean anything that didn’t exist, since bees were thought not to have knees. But they do have knees, right there between their femurs and tibias. (If, like me, you’re trying to picture these microscopic bones, do remember that insects have an exoskeleton. Hard on the outside, soft on the inside; the opposite to us).
Let’s hope there never comes a time when this world is devoid of bees and their knees. Allotments for everyone!
