Wildflower Planting Project at Penryn Campus 2024

June 13, 2024

At the start of the year (January 2024), the FX Plus Grounds and Gardens team set themselves the target of planting 1,200 wildflowers over the course of the year.

“It was bit of an arbitrary number that meant beating how many we got into the ground the year before,” explains Alasdair Garnett, Gardener at FX Plus.

Through a combination of the conservation volunteering sessions and the continued planting in spare bits of time, we are proud to announce that this week, on 11 June 2024, the team achieved their target.

The honour of planting wildflower number 1,200 was undertaken by Abhishek Dixit, who first initiated the project and conservation volunteering sessions with Alasdair and has just started back with us as part of the Grounds and Gardens team.

All this planting is supporting our biodiversity efforts and helping wildlife thrive on campus.

“This summer, we’ve seen Goldfinches, Meadow Brown Butterflies and Buff-tail Bumblebees feasting in the wildflower meadows that we planted last year!

“Our new plantings of Ox-eye daisies, mallows, self-heals, yellow rattle, and many more native wildflower species will further support bees, butterflies, and birds on campus grounds. 

“We’ll keep planting, and if the weather and time permits then we could end up doubling that number by the end of this year (2024) – you’ll have to wait and see,” says Alasdair.

Below, you can see a photo of wildflower number 1,200 going into the ground and marking this wonderful milestone, as well as some of the other wildflower planting on campus.