National Allotments Week at Hilltop

This week is National Allotments Week, and here at Hilltop HQ we’re on a mission to get as many of you onboard with the campaign as possible. Not sure what its all about? Read on to find out…

National Allotments Week: the campaign

The purpose of the week-long campaign is to inspire more budding gardeners and to get people out and into the garden growing! The National Allotments Society is dedicated towards ‘upholding the interests and rights of the allotment community across the UK.’ They work with the government and other organisations to ‘provide, promote and preserve allotments for all.’ We cannot love this more!

The National Allotments Week campaign theme this year is Plotting for the Future and it aims to celebrate “the contribution that allotments make to a sustainable future.”

Why are Hilltop Honey supporting National Allotments Week?

If you hadn’t already guessed, National Allotments Week is very important to us here at Hilltop Honey- and the reason why is very simple. If there are more allotments, there are more plants- and if more gardeners are cultivating plots that are designed to create a more sustainable future, then that can only be a good thing for our precious bees.

National Allotment Week is an ideal opportunity for us to really invest in growing for the future. For attracting and protecting bees. For creating a blueprint for a greener future, buzzing with life.

How can you get involved?

You don’t really need an allotment to take on the principles of National Allotment Week. The overall aim is to get more us of growing plants that will attract bees and help to sustain a greener land for more years to come. To include our kids in the essential act of responsible gardening for the future. To protect the wildlife. So get involved!

For those of you with allotments, the National Allotment Society are offering prizes for the following:

• Most attractive communal building/ area
• Most family friendly site
• Best outreach project
• 5 perfect veg
• Most unusual fruit grown on a plot
• Garden in a cup- flowers and foliage
• Veggie monsters
• Wildlife friendly project

And for those of you without allotments… what’s to stop you taking part just for the fun of it?!

Creating a bee friendly garden- wherever you are

No allotment? No problem. No garden? No problem! The RSPB has lots of really fun ideas for kids to get involved in creating a bee-friendly garden so that you can make a wildlife friendly space, whatever your budget and wherever you live. There are so many ways- find out more here.

Here’s a quick rundown on the plants that our bee friends really love:

• Cornflowers
• Sunflowers
• Poppies
• Flowering fruit trees
• Flowering shrubs

Remember to avoid the use of pesticides and try to plant so that you have flowers all year round. Window boxes are great for smaller gardens or houses without a garden, and bee hotels are an amazing way to really look after our buzzy friends! There are more ideas for gardening with kids here.