Year 4 set off into the grounds armed with trowels and lots of donated pollinator-friendly seeds to fulfil an experiment with planting in the soil in the blackened bonfire circle.
The lesson was part of a project called Pollinator Promise, which encourages children to be more environmentally aware, especially in relation to pollinating insects.
The organisations involved in the Pollinator Promise include Imperial College London, Open University, University of Aberdeen, Learning through Landscapes, St Alban’s Primary School Havant and Museo di Storia Naturale della Maremma (in Italy).
Last year we started to survey the grounds to see what food sources we had for our pollinating insects and we intended to have a big planting program in the spring. Unfortunately, 2020 did not go according to plan and in lieu of being able to plant the seeds at school, a number of our science classes were given the seed balls to plant at home. However, for an unknown reason the germination was poor.
The company that gave us the seeds, Seedball, have replaced them for us and so we are starting again!
We will be planting in many different areas on the school site to see which situation is the most successful. However, most interestingly, we are experimenting by planting seedballs in the scorched area where the bonfire was on 5 November. The idea came from Seth, one of our pupils, who wanted to try this out. Mrs Edwards, science teacher, consulted many of the senior partners in Pollination Promise to discuss and there is some uncertainty about how this project might fair: the pH of the soil may not be suitable for our seeds. Equally there is some excitement from Imperial College and others within the group as well: there is little competition as all the other plants have been burnt. We will be watching the area closely over the next few months.
