Take a closer look at the colourful plants dotted along an initially unassuming Bristol alleyway and you’ll see them teeming with insects. Bumblebees, hoverflies and ladybirds throng around a mixture of catmint, yarrow, geraniums and anemones. “It’s buzzing with pollinators now,” Flora Beverley says.

Just over a year ago, the alley we are walking down was a dreary, litter-strewn dumping ground. Now, thanks to the pollinator pathways project, it is filled with nectar-rich plants and bee hotels. Colourful murals line the walls. A neighbour and her son passing by stop to tell Beverley they watered the plants yesterday. The local people who helped to transform the pathways continue to maintain them too.

The pollinator pathways project in Knowle, Bristol. Photograph: Adrian Sherratt/The Guardian

A trail runner and fitness influencer, Beverley started the project after a chronic illness left her unable to spend as much time running in the countryside. She wanted to bring more nature into her local community and, at the same time, help to connect important nearby habitats in Bristol including parks and the Northern Slopes nature reserve with insect-friendly corridors.

The project took off unexpectedly well and in the space of a year local groups have revamped seven alleyways around the south of the city. Most transformations take place over a weekend. Volunteers and mural artists pile in, and it is funded by small grants that Beverley – who does not get paid – applies for in her own time, street collections and donations from local businesses.

“The things that are good for nature tend to be very good for people too,” she says. “We’re lucky to have so many green spaces in Bristol, but there is a lack of connection between them. Habitat fragmentation is a big issue.”

Scientists are reporting catastrophic declines in insect numbers around the world. International reviews estimate annual losses globally of between 1% and 2.5% of total insect biomass every year. The drivers of the plummeting numbers vary, but include habitat loss, exposure to pesticides and the climate crisis. In the UK, ​a citizen science survey run by the conservation charity Buglife monitors bug splats on cars. It found a 63% decline in flying insects between 2021 and 2024.

There are many ways to help protect insects, some simple, others harder to achieve. Prof Dave Goulson from the University of Sussex says that creating more pollinator-friendly habitat in our cities is “a fairly easy win”.

“We already know that urban areas can be surprisingly good for pollinators compared to modern, intensive farmland,” he says. “If there were initiatives greening up gardens, parks, road verges, roundabouts, cemeteries, little alleys in Bristol, then it all adds up.

“And there’s no downside to having lots of wildflowers in our cities. As well as helping to conserve biodiversity, it connects people with nature. Kids can grow up surrounded by bumblebees, butterflies and birdsong.”

The Bristol alleyways project is the most local of actions, but it taps into a rich global movement. The US artist Sarah Bergmann coined the term “pollinator pathway” in 2007 for her project connecting Seattle University’s campus to Nora’s Woods via a corridor of native plants.

A huge network of community pollinator pathways has since sprung up across 300 towns in 24 states in the US and in Ontario, Canada. It began in 2017 when the conservationist Donna Merrill offered people near her home town of Wilton free native trees to form a passage of pollinator habitat that spanned the Connecticut-New York state line. Merrill was particularly inspired by Oslo’s “bee highway” created a few years before – a network of green rooftops, beehives and patches of insect-friendly plants that stretches across the city.

In the UK, Buglife is tackling the loss of pollinator habitat on a national scale through its B-Lines network, which is mapping a series of 3km-wide insect superhighways that crisscross the country, connecting the best remaining wildflower-rich areas. The charity has been working with farmers, landowners, wildlife organisations, businesses, local authorities and the public for more than 10 years to help fill at least 10% of each line with insect-friendly plants.

The pollinator pathways project in Knowle, Bristol.
Photograph: Adrian Sherratt/The Guardian

The B-lines have already supported the population expansion of species such as the bilberry bumblebee in Shropshire and the small scabious mining bee in south-west England. Buglife invites pollinator projects to mark their initiatives across the insect superhighways on an online map, with more than 3,800 plotted so far.

The charity’s B-Lines officer, Rachel Richards, says the lines running north-south are particularly important for migrating species and those moving northwards as a result of the climate crisis.

“Reconnecting fragmented landscapes builds resilience,” she says. “As we see more fires and floods, it’s quite easy for an amazing site to be destroyed or partly destroyed. But if we have the stepping stones of wildflower-rich habitat, it can be colonised by insects from neighbouring sites.”

Back in Bristol, Beverley is hoping to expand her pollinator pathways project and make it as sustainable as possible. With hotter and drier summers expected, she has made sure to include a variety of hardy and drought-resistant plants in the alleyways. Weeds that might block accessibility are manually removed to prevent the council spraying herbicide.

After her videos of the alleyway transformations shared on social media attracted hundreds of thousands of views, she also plans to create a template for people outside Bristol to emulate.

In the meantime, the people living around the existing alleyways are eager to look after them. “The small amounts of litter that are dumped there get cleaned up really quickly because people know that it’s a wonderful space, and we want to keep it that way,” Beverley says. “It’s a bee buffet, and now the pollinators are coming in their masses.”