Puddock Hill Journal #33: You don’t need a big plot of land to help revive nature.
About a month ago, a friend and frequent reader of this newsletter told me she found my reports on Puddock Hill “intimidating” because she has far less land than we do (she lives in a suburban subdivision) and employs a normal weekly gardening service.
I thought of this conversation while reading a new paper in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment entitled “A little does a lot: Can small-scale planting for pollinators make a difference?”
Spoiler alert: yes, it can.
The authors of the paper reviewed data from existing studies and conducted their own research in an effort to determine the scale required to benefit pollinator conservation. They concluded that “Pollinator conservation interventions increased species richness and abundance in almost all of the studies examined, with the greatest increases in pollinator ecological metrics seen from hedgerows covering 40 m² and herbaceous interventions at 500 m².”