Topic: Bluebells on Allotments

[RobandAlly]

We have found bluebells running along side our allotment. I know they are proctected in some way but not sure what its included.

Just wondering for future reference just incase they have some idea to turn the place into housing.

[Nigella]

Bluebells are protected by the Wildlife and Counrtyside Act 1981. (this is native bluebells only.)

It is an offence to move them without the landowners permission, and it is illegal to sell them. Although it is not illegal to pick them.

The protection of bluebells is unlikely to effect if your allotments were to be sold / used as a development site. Any develper would undertake an ecology survey - and a management plan to move or protect the bluebells would be put in to place.

Look in your local plan or UDP - as this will tell you about your local policies for allotments / if your site has been earmarked as a development site.

Hope this helps.  ;) 

[moonbells]

We just put a circular seat up around a tree where I work - involving a load of block paviours and some earthmoving. There was about a square yard of bluebells where the paving was due to go and I mentioned this - turned out nobody else had noticed.  Bluebells were duly shifted out of range and chair constructed, but I bet they'd have been dug up and thrown otherwise...

(I would have liked to have been the recipient, mind you! I just put two bought pots of the native ones in my lottie's orchard area in the hope they'll spread like crazy under the apples.)

moonbells

[Gardenantics]

They will spread!
The native bluebell is under threat of being out competed by the cultivated spanish bluebell, which will happily cross breed and pruduce hybrids which then overgrow the native parent clumps.
I have just being involved with a scheme to take native bluebell seed to Queensland Australia, to grow in the Tamborine Mountain Botanic Gardens. I delivered the seed by hand in Sept. 2004, and they are being raised there now.
I recommend taking a pack of seed through customs, (I did the paperwork first), but we were the only people on the flight to have anything to declare, and were the first to get through!
On my visit to Queensland I did notice some spanish bluebells in gardens around the area, so the plan to have an isolated gene pool of native English bluebells in Australia looks like it will fail before it gets started. The Australians were very happy to try the experiment though, and you never know with plants!

Brian