Brighten up your local school with our daffodil giveaway

For the third year in a row, we are giving away a ‘Little Daffodils’ pack to 25 nominated schools in the vicinity of our eight garden centres.

This is part of our continued commitment to encouraging an interest in plants, gardens and nature in the youngest

Each pack will comprise of a 20kg sack of mixed daffodils as well as bulb fibre for planting.

How to nominate

The giveaway goes live on our Facebook page and Instagram feed on Friday September 25^th. We’ll be asking for nominations for schools in the comments below the posts – these must be added before 7pm on Friday October 2^nd.

The nominations will be collected and three schools in each region (four in East Devon) will be selected and contacted by our team. A representative from each school with need to collect their daffodil packs by Sunday October 18^th.

Why daffodils?

Daffodils are one of the early flowers to pop up, heralding the start of Spring and warmer days ahead. Their bright colour always cheers everyone up – including school children and teachers!

Once planted they come up year after year, and they often self-propagate, so you’ll have even more flowers over the years.

They need very little maintenance. You can deadhead them, but you should leave the green foliage for six to eight weeks before cutting back, to allow the plant to take in sunlight for the bulb, so it will flower again even better next year.

As well as making the school area look nice and encouraging wildlife, the daffodils can be used for lots of school projects. If the school has a gardening club, they could plant the bulbs as part of their extracurricular activity.

The daffodils can also potentially be used for:

Art: with any year group able to paint pictures of the daffodils
Science: where students can learn about the different parts of a flower
Literacy: writing poems about the flowers, with reference to Wordsworth’s ‘Daffodils’
Economics: school councils or business enterprise groups could pick the daffodils to sell to parents as cut flowers, also raising money for their schools.

A guide to planting daffodil bulbs

The ideal time to plant the bulbs is during September and October.

Choose a spot that is usually sunny or lightly shaded.
Plant them in the ground with the pointed end of the bulb facing upwards.
The depth of planting should be around three times the bulb’s height, and they generally need to be spaced at about twice their width.
The bulbs will do best in well-draining soil, or you can use the bulb fibre compost either in the ground, raised beds or containers.

Don’t forget to nominate!

Keep an eye out on Facebook or Instagram on Friday September 25th for the giveaway, so you can nominate your local school.