Natural England works for people, places and nature to conserve and enhance biodiversity, landscapes and wildlife in rural, urban, coastal and marine areas. We conserve and Wildlife on allotments enhance the natural environment for its intrinsic value, the wellbeing and enjoyment of people, and the economic prosperity it brings. www.naturalengland.org.uk © Natural England 2007 ISBN 978-1-84754-018-8 Catalogue code NE20 Written by Stephen Arnott. Designed by RR Donnelley Front cover image: Allotments are scarce in some urban areas. Judith Hanna/Natural England www.naturalengland.org.uk Wildlife on allotments Although allotments will always be to survive on intensively managed mainly used for growing food, they farmland find a refuge on allotment have other values that are now gaining sites. This leaflet will help you enhance greater recognition. They are great the conservation value of your places for healthy exercise, provide allotment, while continuing to good opportunities for socialising, and cultivate it for fruit and vegetables. put us back in touch with the earth. We all, ultimately, depend on the soil for History our foods but in this highly processed, Allotments have been around for a pre-packaged age the connection is long time. They were originally created often forgotten. for poor agricultural workers to Allotments are also an increasingly compensate them for the loss of important resource for wildlife. Many common land during the enclosures of of the plants and animals that struggle the eighteenth century. Allotments Allotments are a refuge for both people and wildlife. Peter Wakely/Natural England Fresh food and fresh air. Peter Wilson/FLPA 2 3 own food and escape the noise of their Size and price factories and workshops. These days, Allotments are traditionally measured many office workers feel the same way. in ‘square poles’; a pole (also known as Allotments today a ‘rod’ or ‘perch’, or even a ‘lug’) being 5 1/2 yards or 5.03 metres. A square Despite their popularity, allotment pole covers just over 25 square metres numbers have been in decline since and the largest allotments available WWII. In 1950 there were over one are usually ‘ten pole plots’ of 250 million in the UK, but today that number square metres. Diverse, wildlife-friendly farmland is under threat from intensive agriculture. has dropped to around 250,000. Peter Wakely/Natural England You will have to pay an annual rent for your plot, the price depending on its proved a good way of alleviating rural size and the level of local demand. On poverty and their creation became average, expect to pay between £30 official government policy in 1845. By and £40 for a 250 square metre plot, An urban allotment. Judith Hanna/Natural England 1873 there were 242,000 of them, one though this price can more than allotment for every three male Initiative. The latter has published a double in areas where land is scarce. agricultural workers in England. range of literature on the subject. For Some allotment authorities vary their more information visit their website at charges according to the availability Most new allotments after 1875 were www.farmgarden.org.uk/ari. of water and other amenities, and created for the benefit of urban most have concessionary rates for labourers. Rising wages meant that Finding an allotment pensioners and the unemployed. More many agricultural labourers no longer details can be found in Allotments: a had to work their own land to make If you’d like to take on an allotment, plot holder’s guide available from ends meet and, having toiled in the contact your local council in the first www.communities.gov.uk fields all day, few dug plots for instance. They will have a list of local The next generation will need allotments too. pleasure! Federation of City Gardens allotments and may manage most of them. In some places the take-up of The situation was different in towns. The majority of allotments have legal allotments is very high and you may be Here, labourers welcomed the chance protection and cannot be sold without placed on a waiting list. to be out in the fresh air, grow their the permission of the Secretary of State, but despite this many sites have been If there are insufficient allotments in swallowed up by development while your area your local authority has a some, for various reasons, have simply legal duty to provide more. However, been abandoned. an authority is only obliged to consider a request where there is sufficient A number of organisations are working demand; in practice this means getting to reverse this trend including the together with at least five other local National Society of Allotment and people (registered on the electoral roll) Leisure Gardeners (www.nsalg.org.uk) and approaching the authority as a The size of your plot will vary according to local and the Allotments Regeneration An urban oasis. Federation of City Gardens group. demand. Stephen Arnott/Natural England 4 5 has a free hand and can multiply without check, forcing you to spray again and again. In some cases the use of pesticides has even created pest problems! For example, the fruit tree red spider mite only became a significant pest in the 1930s following the widespread agricultural use of tar-oil sprays – the They all work, but they may kill friend as well as mites could cope with spraying far foe. Roger Key/Natural England better than their predators and thrived Cut out the chemicals as a result. The key to getting wildlife to work with you is to look after the beneficial creatures that already live on your A valuable ally, the seven-spot ladybird Coccinella septempunctata. Roger Key/Natural England allotment and to encourage more – and different ones – to settle there. shelled pests with their beady eyes Allotment authorities and land use Perhaps the easiest way of conserving fixed on carrots, strawberries and The name of your allotment authority wildlife is to reduce your use of toxic prize-winning marrows! It’s true that, will be on the tenancy agreement you chemicals, ideally cutting them out all left uncontrolled, many creatures can sign when you take on your plot. The together (see also Companion play havoc with a crop, but for every agreement will outline your planting, page 22). Most toxins found ‘pest’ there is at least one predator Do you have room for a pond? Shona Turnbull/HBP responsibilities as a plot-holder. You in pesticides are non-specific and are species ready to step in and tackle it on should always consult your allotment just as likely to kill friends as foes. Creating habitats your behalf. authority if you want to do something Spraying against pests will often kill The next step towards befriending that changes land use (that is, doing Attracting beneficial wildlife can be their predators as well, meaning that wildlife is to encourage more of the something other than growing fruit and quite straightforward and this leaflet the next wave of pests that blows in ‘right’ kind of creature to live on your vegetables) for example, planting contains many tips for doing so. allotment by creating suitable habitats. hedges, ‘fedges’ and trees, digging a However, once you’ve encouraged You can do this at two levels: there are pond etc. (see Habitats, nesting sites some of nature’s helpers to live on your habitats you could create on your own and refuges, page 11). plot you can’t expect them to do all the plot, and there are larger habitats you work! A healthy population of and your fellow plot-holders could Thinking green predators on your allotment will help create within the wider allotment area. subdue a host of pests, but sometimes Some growers (but a diminishing A good example of the latter is a pond even they will be overwhelmed. In these number these days) may still regard (see Habitats, nesting sites and refuges, cases you may have to step in to remove wildlife as ‘the enemy’; imagining page 11). Many beneficial creatures will infested growth or even whole plants. legions of furry, feathered, slimy and Look after beneficial insects such as the green use a pond as a watering hole, and lacewing Chrysopa carnea. Roger Key/Natural England digging a wildlife pond will boost the 6 7 Habitats checklist Do you have room for any of these? hedges and ‘fedges’ ponds and bog areas nest boxes for birds roosts for bats ‘beetle banks’ overgrown, undisturbed areas An emperor moth caterpillar Pavonia pavonia on log and stone piles bramble. Chris Gibson/Natural England a wildflower/herb patch. Managed wildlife areas local frog population, these Empty, overgrown plots can make an amphibians being some of the best slug allotment look unkempt and uncared predators there are. Unless you have a for, but a solution is to ‘manage’ these very large plot it’s unlikely you’ll be sites as wildlife areas. able to sacrifice the space for a Untended plots may be taken over by substantial pond, but within the wider bramble which is an excellent food allotment area there might be a suitable source and refuge for many kinds of patch of land that is lying unused. wildlife. Apart from attracting insects such as hoverflies, bees and lacewings, a tangle of brambles is a favourite nesting site for birds like robins, wrens, song thrushes and blackbirds. Some warblers and finch species may also use bramble in this way. To control bramble, cut different sections back on a three- or four-year rotation so there is always a gradation between first-year growth and mature . It’s not just blue tits that benefit from nesting boxes.