Bees and other pollinators are integral to our lives and survival, providing a natural source of farming, pollinating our crops and orchards, whilst producing honey as a bi-product. We have twelve bee hives on site and as part of Indurent’s celebration of the RHS 60th Anniversary we thought it a good idea to add to the bio-diversity of plants available to our bees by planting some fruit trees and wildflowers in areas that were currently mowed lawns. In addition we challenged our Ground Maintenance Team’s Apprentice to build us a small herb garden.
So, what did we want to achieve? To provide spots of natural beauty to enhance the Park’s appearance and value. We aimed to target customer wellbeing by providing places for our customers to spend time and enjoy, whilst also benefiting our pollinators/ecosystem.
We engaged with our Grounds Maintenance contractor, Peter Ashley Ltd, to identify three suitable areas that would provide not only a good location for the fruit trees and flowers to grow, but that as the orchards developed would be in locations easily accessible to our Occupiers and their staff.
Peter Ashley’s team came back with a layout. Indurent would plant 30 trees across three locations (10 in each), the trees would be a mix of apple, pear and plum. Each of the locations would then be under sown with wildflowers adding to the aesthetic of the area and providing more opportunities to our pollinators.
In order to ensure this endeavour was brought to the attention of our Occupiers we held a tree planting day. Our various Occupiers, contacts within our key suppliers, and the Mayor of Rochdale was invited to join us in the morning to assist with the planting of the trees. Those that attended were invited to a buffet lunch to further the sense of community and engagement.
Once the tree planting was completed the area was then prepared for the sowing of the wildflower seeds. This process was completed in May and was successful.
As an addendum to the project our Grounds Maintenance Apprentice was challenged with creating a herb garden as an additional feature and for our occupiers to enjoy. Using some abandoned pallets and paint we already had in stock, he produced a practical and attractive design that is prominently located next to the Estate Management Office.
The investment for the entire project was approximately £1400 with the labour either coming from volunteers or our in house team this was the cost of the fruit trees, flower seed and herbs etc.
We have successfully created three new points of interest for our Occupiers to enjoy and added to the site’s biodiversity in a way that will benefit our onsite bee hives and the many other pollinators that populate our site.
