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!
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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…
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