Lets recycle, craft and grow! Making wildflower seed balls is a great way to recycle scrap paper whilst adding some fun into planting! Once done, they can be planted in your garden or given away as a fantastic gift. Planting wildflowers is a great way to provide pollen and nectar (aka food!) for pollinators, including bees, butterflies, moths, hoverflies and beetles!
Extra- Below you can download a minibeast spotter sheet to help you identify the bugs that visit your flower patch…
What you will need:
- Scraps of paper
- Water
- Scissors
- Blender
- Bowl
- Spoon
- Native wildflower seed
- Food colouring (optional)
How to create your wildflower seed balls:
- Find some scrap paper and using scissors, cut it up into small pieces. We recommend using at least two sheets worth of paper.
- Soak the paper pieces in a bowl of water for about 30 minutes
- Put the soaked paper into a blender, adding food colouring if you wish to create some colour, and blend it into a pulp. Ask for an adult’s helper here if you need it and remember – NEVER put your hands in a blender!
- Making sure the blender is unplugged, and with the help of an adult, put the pulp back into the bowl. Using your spoon, stir the wildflower seeds into the mixture.
- Time to get your hands messy! Take some of the paper/seed mixture and squeeze it into a ball, adding more to create a bigger ball if needed. Make sure you give it a good squeeze to get all the excess water out. Make as many balls as you can with your mixture. You
- Now leave the balls out to dry. Don’t worry about planting them straight away, they can be stored for a few months – spring and autumn are the best times to plant!
- When you are ready to plant the seed balls, soak them in a little water first. Planting in pots beneath a thin layer of soil works best.
- Be sure to keep an eye on them and see what beautiful colours start to bloom! You may also spot some insects coming to visit…
Share your homemade wildflower seed balls by using #DiscoverLearnPlay
