Four months after pupils of Newlands Spring Primary School planted wildflowers in their local green space, how is it doing?
At the end of June, two groups of Year 5s returned to survey the same patch of grass where they’d previously planted wildflower plugs. These were a colourful mix of twelve flower species that are native to UK soil. As plugs rather than seeds, the hope was for many of these to flower by early summer – and the seed bombs they planted held a number of different grasses which fully establish in two months.
Led by our Parks and Conservation Volunteer Leader, the children were equipped with measuring tapes and magnifying glasses to aid their observations as well as information sheets to help them identify which species of flower, grass and pollinator they had found. All this went onto their clipboards and will help our parks team fully survey the site.
We saw that an impressive seven out of the twelve wildflower species had fully bloomed!
- Bird’s foot trefoil
- Cat’s ear
- Kidney vetch
- Buttercups
- Yarrow
- Red clover
- Lesser knapweed
We also spotted even more wildflowers such as a tall batch of common thistle and five grasses including cat’s tail and mouse barley. A range of pollinators also visited while the pupils were there, from butterflies to beetles.
This growth will be followed by the younger flowers from the seed bombs, which bloom at different times across the year. We hope these children look forward to seeing that further change!
