Where BeeWalking Begins 🐝🍃
My secret garden - and how to find yours
My Secret Garden – Where BeeWalking Begins 🐝🍃
As a registered BeeWalker with the Bumblebee Conservation Trust one of my key survey sites is right on my doorstep.
Over the past four years, I’ve lovingly developed my 250m² allotment into more than just a place to grow vegetables, it’s now a micro-transect I walk each month to monitor bumblebee activity. Divided into three observation zones and followed in the same circuit between March and October, it forms part of the national BeeWalk survey scheme.
It’s also a space I’ve transformed into a thriving biodiverse haven. I grow organic fruit and vegetables to help offset rising household costs and I share the space too. Friends regularly visit to pick strawberries, sow seeds, and bring their children to learn hands-on about how food grows, what pollinators need, and why protecting our ecosystems matters.
The first half of the allotment features a corridor of lavender I propagated at home, now buzzing with activity. There’s a line of fruit trees – Golden Delicious, Cherry Stella, Apple Scrumptious, Pear Conferences, and Plum, underplanted with allium-like blooms from last year’s onions, catmint, verbena, and dahlias.
The back half is a working project – pumpkins, butternut squash climbing through sweetcorn, herb beds, Jerusalem artichokes, and 15 asparagus crowns that form delicate ferns. A shallow water station is topped up daily for hedgehogs, bees, birds, and butterflies.
This is biodiversity in action. A pollinator haven. A sustainable food source. And a living, breathing classroom for my children.
Each year, I add more not just plants, but purpose. And as a BeeWalker, I can turn all of this into data that helps protect our bumblebees for future generations. 🐝
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