The value of allotments is considerable - they provide the opportunity for eating healthy, locally-produced food, for healthy exercise and for youngsters to learn that food actually comes from the soil, not a supermarket shelf!

Food produced on an allotment is food you can trust. You know what, if anything, it has been sprayed with. You know if it is genetically modified (GM). You know what varieties you have grown, so hopefully you know it will be tasty and nutritious. Most certainly you know that it has been produced locally, so it has not been driven, or worse, flown for hundreds or thousands of miles, producing air pollution and greenhouse gases. What better reasons for growing food on an allotment!

But you don't even have to rent or work an allotment in order to eat the food. Many allotment sites now have shops where you can buy the excess food produced by plot holders. How much better to spend a bit of your money helping out the plot holders of your local allotment rather than the directors and shareholders of the big supermarkets!

We know that ALL fellow Allotmenteers are our friends, but the friendship doesn't end there! We also have a host of friends that are sometimes ignored and unsung, or worse still, even shunned by some who may not be aware of who their friends and who their enemies really are. We all know the real enemies - those pests that compete for our crops. However in our hurry to exterminate those pests we sometimes overlook what effect this can have on the long term. By destroying the pests indiscriminately ourselves we often deprive their natural predators of food. The predators decline and the pests increase, starting another round of an unending battle to rid ourselves of slugs, weevils, aphids, greenfly etc. etc. until in the end the only wildlife on our allotments are our pests!

Allotments are not only places of escape for people, they also provide valuable havens for a variety of plants and wildlife by providing a natural environment. If you want to keep your allotment as natural as possible, the first thing you should do is cut out the toxic chemicals.

Most of the toxins found in pesticides are non-specific meaning they kill friend and foe indiscriminately. The knock-on effect of this is that the next wave of pests that arrives has a free hand and can multiply unchecked, meaning you will have a worse problem than you started with!

Why are allotments good for wildlife & wildlife good for allotments?

Whatever you choose to grow on an allotment, you can minimise harm to wildlife and maintain natural balance on your plot by using organic methods. A compost heap is both garden and wildlife friendly. You can use the well rotted compost to nourish the soil and the heap can provide shelter for insects and other small animals. Hedgehogs sometimes shelter in compost heaps and will help to eat the slugs and snails which prey on plants. Soft fruit bushes are fantastic for birds such as blackbirds and thrushes, though they may be stripped of raspberries and currants before you have time to harvest them yourself! Some allotment associations don't allow these fruits to be grown. Companion planting is a natural way of maintaining balance and reducing unwanted pests. Plant marigolds next to tomatoes, for example, as they produce a scent that deters pests such as Greenfly and Blackfly. Nectar loving insects such as bees and butterflies will also benefit from the flowers.

Ponds are a wildlife magnet and are allowed on some allotments. Make sure that if you have a pond that it has a sloping edge so that animals can drink and climb out easily if they fall in. If you really want to encourage more of the right kind of wildlife, there are several steps you can take to create suitable habitats. One is to create space for wildlife on your own plot; the other is to create a communal pond within the wider allotment area on an unused patch of land (unless you have a very large plot, you are unlikely to be able to sacrifice the space yourself). A pond will provide a watering hole for a range of beneficial wildlife, while also boosting the local frog population, some of the best slug predators there are!

Threats

There are a number of threats to wildlife in allotments for a number of reasons:

• Lack of understanding of wildlife potential
• Excessive use of herbicides and manual clearing of weeds - which are also wild flowers
• Use of 'metaldehyde' slug pellets which also poison hedgehogs, etc. Ironically, hedgehogs are gardeners' friends as they eat slugs and other animals which threaten crops!
• Excessive tidiness
• Possible lack of education and therefore good practice in terms of recycling, air and soil pollution from fires, toxic wood preservatives and water preservation
• Lack of resources available for allotment maintenance and improvement (in comparison to other priorities).

Carrickfergus in Bloom Web Link: Loads of advice on wildlife gardening plus much much more

RHS Web Link: Encouraging wildlife into your garden.