Supporting National Children’s Gardening Week

Supporting National Children’s Gardening Week

For this year’s National Children’s Gardening Week, we were eager to help inspire young pupils and their parents.

 

Wanting to educate a younger audience on the opportunities our industry has to offer and to encourage the next generation of gardeners, our team recently visited Tockwith Church of England Primary Academy with a little gift.

 

In support of National Children’s Gardening Week, we paid the school a visit with a donation of 180 lavender plants, with one for every pupil. After learning about how to plant and care for them, the pupils were encouraged to take a lavender home to plant with their parents over half term.

 

 

During our time there, the pupils also learnt about how plants and trees play a vital role in attracting bees, and why bees are so important to our food chain. It is estimated that around one-third of the food we eat every day relies on pollination by honeybees, such as avocados, broccoli, celery and squash.

 

The school itself is home to a colony of honeybees, that in their first year provided a 40lbs crop of honey that was sold to make £111 towards new bee suits for the children. All Year 4 pupils have lessons in beekeeping and observe the colony in action.

 

And to support the bees that inhabit our own nursery, we launched a Trees for Bees initiative earlier this year, planting trees, wildflowers and shrubs at the company’s apiary.

 

In the height of summer, up to 800,000 bees inhabit the company’s grounds to collect pollen; however, we wanted to encourage bees to continue to visit this later into the year when many species stop flowering.

 

We are delighted to be supporting National Children’s Gardening Week for the first time and we hope that by giving each pupil something to take home and grow, we can capture children’s enthusiasm at a time when plants will grow quickly in the warmer weather.

 

We are always keen to spread the message about the vital help that bees give us and to encourage a better understanding of how we can help to boost the bee population.

Posted 27th May 9:49am