Wildflower Meadow Planting

A few weeks ago we invited some children from our local primary school to come and have a go at sowing wildflower seeds as part of our wildflower meadow project.

We have a grassy area outside the front of our Newbury depot which was looking a bit neglected so our director had the idea of planting a wildflower meadow, we have planted skips and bulk bags in the past which always look great so this was a step up!

Our friends at Sun Dog Plant Hire rotivated the land ready to receive the seeds, we had lots of rain on the lead up to the sowing day so the ground was perfect.

The day started with a walk from Parsons Down School with children from the Eco School Council, Eco Schools is an initiative to encourage school communities to become more environmentally aware and empowers pupils to drive change within their school and the local community.

After a lot of work Parsons Down School was awarded the Eco Schools Green Flag and is keen to spread the word throughout the local community, so we were very happy to get their help with this project.

When we arrived at the depot we had a look at the seeds that were going to be sown, there are 11 types of wildflowers in the mix that are perfect for the area. We discussed why it is important to the local eco systems to encourage wildlife into the area and what additional wildlife would be attracted to our wildflowers.

We get a surprisingly varied amount of animals at our depots including birds, foxes, squirrels and mice but it would be lovely to see more insects to help support these existing animals and encourage even more biodiversity.

We mixed the seeds with sand to help us see where we have seeded and we got to work, the children were expert seed sowers and in no time the whole area was covered, after a good rake over the children had earned a break so it was time for biscuits and a game.

We played a flower matching game to try and match the name of the flowers we are growing with their picture, we found out that playing Minecraft is great for teaching flower names!!! We gave the children a copy of the list so that they can come back when all the flowers are in bloom and match them up in real life.

Once that was done we made some bird seed feeders from old plastic bottles filled them up and hung them ready for the birds to enjoy, It was a brilliant day, we were lucky with the weather and the children and staff were engaging and full of enthusiasm throughout.

We finished off by weighing the whole team on our weigh bridge, we were just over 300kg for us all!