August - Village Voices

Hollesley Bay once included a farm, and it provided vegetables and dairy products to many
other prisons. Today, under the experienced eye of expert horticulturist Peter Bateman,
prisoners grow from seed the perennial and annual plants that will be used in the native wild
flower project. Prisoners are trained in the glasshouses and propagation units to grow herbs
and vegetables for the kitchens of both prisons.
Insects have high priority in the Biodiversity Action Plan, because they are vital to
agriculture, and also because so many attractive species we take for granted are in real
trouble. Bees come in all shapes and sizes, and because they all pollinate flowers and crops,
their survival is crucial, both to our native flora and also to you and me. Pat’s
Contributed
enthusiasm is boundless. She shows me a bee project being run by prisoners, where a
suntrap between three walls will become a bee breeding area, with special nest boxes
designed and built by the prisoners. Later, I meet the men in their well-equipped workshop,
where they are producing nest boxes for owls, tits, flycatchers, hedgehogs – and bees. Lots
of their boxes go to schools, environmental trusts and local conservation groups throughout
Suffolk. In fact, the churchyards at Hollesley and Boyton received bird nest boxes in time
for the nesting season, as well as hedgehog and insect boxes.
As I left HMP & YOI Hollesley Bay, I passed beneath the large roadside rookery where
dozens of birds cawed in their treetop citadel and whirled through the air carrying twigs.
Rooks are known to be pretty intelligent birds, and I think they chose their rookery site
wisely.
Laurie Forsyth
Wildflowers attract insects; insects are food for the migrant hawker dragonfly.
August 2011 page 6 www.villagevoices.org.uk