Debbie Wallace, Urban ranger for Your Housing delivered a wonderfully inciteful walk n’ talk session for the Society on Saturday 5th April and the session which was well attended, included a tour and discussion of the nature and mini forest area alongside the site on Wintermans Road that Debbie has been developing. Later in the session, the group was treated to a rare visit to a gated natured reserve on Bulfinch Walk that Debbie has created from what was a plain grassed area and is has been transformed into a biodiverse oasis.

Debbie highlighted and talked the group through a range of native plants that flower early and are key to encouraging pollinating insects such as Bumble bees and Miner bees, which are key to ensuring a healthy crop of fruit on our allotment fruit trees.
If we just look at little closer, these native plants are all around us and often appear on our plots in early spring.

It was fascinating to understand which plants attract the beneficial insects and also how we can support these invertebrates throughout the season by creating attractive and natural habitats to help encourage a greater diversity and population that will assist us to control those insects that can be detrimental to our crop growing efforts.

Debbie also provided lots of useful information on the many different books available about identification of insects, plants and other biodiversity topics and made a really useful suggestion about the creation of a Society library and which the committee will now take forward in developing as a shared society resource in the Cabin.

To see some more pictures from the walk n’ talk, please click below to open the pictures in a new window (Mobile) or viewing in an application on your computer.

For those plot holders with families who missed the session and who would still like to participate in one of these fantastic free sessions, Debbie has shared an free event tailored for younger bug explorers and budding botanists that she will be delivering in the nature reserve/woodland area of Wintermans Road on Saturday 10th May. Please click here for more details.

If you would like to know how to make a habitat for ground nesting bees, please click this link to view the poster and instructions Debbie kindly provided and keep an eye out for the cabin library once we get it up and running.

Keep an eye for our late summer tree pruning sessions!