Community groups champion efforts to save Scotland’s pollinators

The seventh Pollinator Strategy Progress Report details the work being done by individuals, local authorities, environmental groups, researchers and particularly community groups across the country in support of the Pollinator Strategy for Scotland.

Pollinators are vital for our biodiversity and play a critical role in our food and farming industries, but their populations face challenges due to land use intensification, habitat loss, diseases, pesticides and climate change.

Despite these challenges, community groups and volunteers have been improving their local areas by planting wildflower meadows, orchards and native hedgerows and adding pollinator-friendly borders and beds.

• Yorkhill Green Spaces in Glasgow cares for three wildflower meadows in their local parks. They monitor biodiversity improvements, regularly update a species list and they’ve also created bee banks – sheltered mounds of bare soil where solitary bees can nest.
• The Fife Golf Trust have used a grant from the Scottish Government’s Nature Restoration Fund to better manage seven golf courses for nature. This amounts to 544 hectares where species-rich grassland and native mixed hedgerows enhance and connect habitats for pollinators.
• The Denmarkfield Rewilding project near Luncarty, Perthshire, has taken fields formerly devoted to barley growing and transformed them into a nature-rich area. They have planted orchards and hedgerows, with surveys showing a significant return of wildflower and bumblebee species.
• Ninewells Community Garden manages a therapeutic garden within the grounds of Ninewells Hospital, Dundee. In 2024 they worked with RePollinate to plant a wildflower garden in Ninewells Oncology Courtyard and were recent winners of RHS Community Award for Gardening for Health and Wellbeing.
• St Machar Cathedral in Aberdeen has a Community Biodiversity Project which used a woodland mix of wildflowers and a ‘Meadow in a Box’ to introduce native wildflowers into their grounds. Herbs and shrubs have also been added to provide more forage for insects.

Jim Jeffrey, NatureScot Pollinator Strategy Manager, said: “Communities are taking action across the length and breadth of the country to help Scotland’s pollinators. We’re incredibly impressed by their sustained efforts to transform their local spaces into places where bees, moths and hoverflies can thrive.

“We’d love more people to get involved in helping to monitor pollinators. The UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme helps us gather the evidence we need to better understand pollinators. People can contribute to this valuable work through the Flower-Insect Timed Count (FIT-Count); our website has all the details on how to take part.”