Mission 1: Supporting our pollinators

This week we launched our Swindon Saplings Home Educators group!

We have been fortunate enough to have secured the use of an education room at a local country park, where we can meet for our sessions and get involved in the conservation of the local park.

This week was our first meet-up and we had a fantastic turn out with so many families turning up to get involved! Unfortunately, the overcast drizzly weather put a bit of a dampener on the whole idea of doing a walk to look at the pollinators around the park, so unfortunately we didn’t see many. However, we grabbed some litter pickers and bags and took a walk around the site, identifying areas that we could try and make a positive impact and cleaned up litter as we went. Our walk around the meadows gave us inspiration for the site of our bug hotel that we’re going to make during our next session and we stopped to admire the swifts, swallows and house martins flying above our heads.

After our walk, we took to planting bee friendly flowers into the raised beds that were currently sitting empty and looking sad at the side of the rangers office. We planted specifically ‘pollinator attracting’ flowers including snapdragons, lavender, aubrietia and allium. By this time, the weather was starting to clear and we were lucky enough to watch a few bees visiting our new plants almost instantly, which was really lovely to see. The children also took home some sunflower seeds to plant at home and support their pollinator friends so we are excited to see those start to sprout soon!