Meadowmat is designed to help tackle the decline in pollinating insects

MeadowMat - fast food for pollinating insects

A major campaign has been launched today (17th March 2011) to highlight the decline in British pollinating insects and "Get Britain Buzzing"

Meadowmat has been developed, amongst other reasons, to help meet the needs of pollinating insects such as bees, butterflies, moths and hoverflies.  These creatures are vital to the success of food crops such as peas, beans, oilseed rape and fruit and it is reported that UK crop pollination by insects is valued at £440 million per annum - although I'm not sure how the figure has been arrived at.  What is certain though, is that THREE MILLION HECTARES of wildflowers have disappeared since the 1940's.  That's an area roughly 10 times the size of Essex.

The Get Britain Buzzing campain aims to urge us the public, farmers, business leaders and politicians to take action to increase the numbers of pollinating insects before we see dire consequences for UK Ecosystems.

Details of the campaign haven't been released yet - I'm certainly looking forward to seeing what they are. 

• I definitely hope they involve discouraging developers from paving over areas that could grow the plants that these creatures need for their habitat and their food. 
• I hope that local authorities will recieve enough funding to be able to maintain green spaces. 
• I'd like to see gardening, food production and ecology introduced into the school curriculum, 
• More green roofs,
• Research into why pollinator numbers have declined
• teaching gardeners how to support wildlife in their own space

While I'm waiting to see what ideas have been put forward by the charity Buglife, I shall be sneaking around my husband's farm, armed with packets of wild flower seed to do some wild guerilla gardening.  I just hope these seeds fare better that the ones in my garden...but that's another story