Over the past few months, the Year 3 students have been working with community groups including the B&B Highway, Planting Seeds and Whittlesea Council.
The B&B Highway program started in NSW and encourages schools and community groups to plant native flowering plants that will attract pollinators such as bees, insects and birds to the area. The pollinators can then travel around and stop off at these areas along the ‘Highway’ like humans can at a ‘Bed and Breakfast’.
Whittlesea Council kindly donated nearly 200 flowering plants and the students planted them in a special area behind the basketball courts. We then participated in some Webex sessions with the creators of B&B Highway and Planting Seeds to learn more about the importance of pollinators in our local areas. The students collected data about what pollinators fly around our school and used the iNaturalist App to register the plants and animals that we see at Mill Park Heights.
Tyler King, (a PhD student at Deakin University who is researching pollinators in urban areas), worked with us to create ‘Bee and Insect Hotels’ out of empty cans, bamboo and sticks that we can place around the gardens to encourage more pollinators to visit.
We have really enjoyed being part of this initiative and look forward to continuing with the program next year.
Mrs Becker and the Year 3 Students.
