Our Butterfly Garden Dedicated to Jane Goodall

Linked to the exciting 'Butterfly Farmer Project', we have been gathering information from many professionals to help us create the most wonderful Butterfly Garden in memory of Jane Goodall.

Tom Delahunt (the founder of The Butterfly Farmer Project) introduced us to multiple professionals - one of them being Donna Truwhtye. She runs The Enchanted Gardens near Canterbury and she invited us to visit her nursery. Here we studied what plants were best suited to encourage butterflies to not only visit to collect nectar, but to lay eggs on plants that caterpillars liked to eat. We were surprised at how many different species of plant we integral to the lifestyle of a butterfly, and that different species of butterfly also needed different plants and habitats.

Now we had the information we needed to create the garden; the next step was raising money to purchase the flowers and shrubs. This was trickier. After a lot of research, we found a possible grant commissioned by the Department of Health (National Education Nature Park 2025/26) to 'improve bio-diversity', so we applied. After completing an extremely long and detailed application form - we were successful! The children then got to work designing the garden and looking at suitable plants. Once we received our money, the fun part of going to choose the plants arrived - what a haul! We then asked for volunteers to come in over the Easter Half Term to prepare the site. We were lucky enough to have some adult and child volunteers and, after many hours of hard digging, we successfully cleared the beds in readiness for planting.

Ground prepared, plants acquired; the next job was for the children to take the plants and dig them in. This was no mean feat, and they worked really hard. From the grant money, we also had enough left over to purchase wild flower seeds and plugs to enhance a wild flower mini meadow next to the Butterfly Garden, and some meadow flowers to improve our larger wild meadow area. Once all the plants, plugs and seeds were in, the huge task of watering everything began. The children have worked so hard on this project but we are not stopping there.

We have now been speaking to the RHS (another contact through Tom Delahunt through his Butterfly Farmer Project) and they are interested in offering us a grant to build a butterfly bank up by the garden. This is so exciting as it will encourage even more butterflies to this wonderful area. We have now been allocated a STEM Ambassador to help us with this - Roland Brown from Heart's Delights Farm (yet another amazing contact through the wonderful Tom). He helped us to find the best spot for the bank, and he will be helping to advise us as we build it.

Talking of exciting - on one extremely hot afternoon (during the mini-heatwave), Year 5 joined the Year 2 class to release the butterflies that they had been cultivating in their classroom, out into the newly created Butterfly Garden. It was so wonderful to see the butterflies flutter from what had been their tiny home for the last few weeks, off into the big wide world.

The last thing we need to do to is purchase the plaque to show everyone this beautiful garden is dedicated to Dr Jane Goodall.