École Lord Aylmer Elementary

At Lord Aylmer Elementary’s Junior Campus, approximately 25 students (around age 5) participated in planting native species in 6 raised garden planters bordering the outdoor adventure playground. Students planted milkweeds, beardtongue, sneezeweed, skullcap, goldenrod, cardinal flowers, evening primrose, native grasses (purple lovegrass, big bluestem, side oats grama), and New England aster. Children also went on a treasure hunt, found and sorted natural materials, and created pollinator shelters from these, learning that most bees nest in stems, leaf litter, and old wood rather than hives.

Localeaf Nursery donated the plants for all of these gardens, and Pollinate Aylmer members continued to visit and weed them over the summer as they began to establish. You can see in the later photos the incredible growth the beds experienced in just one season, in large part because of how small and determined the plants planted were to establish.

Join Pollinate Aylmer to help us plant more pollinator habitat and continue to expand the Aylmer Butterflyway this year. We’d love to meet you.