Lucy Tomkinson of the Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust (BBOWT) helps children to get in touch with nature

Did you know that the 15 million gardens in the UK cover an area that’s bigger than all the national nature reserves? And that only one in five children are connected to the natural world around them?

If we could make our gardens more friendly for wildlife that would help bees, butterflies and other pollinating insects, as well as introducing children to nature on their doorstep.

As part of my Developing Green Talent traineeship with the Wildlife Trust I’ve been working on a project to support our work championing wildlife and helping children to get closer to nature.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Sutton Courtenay Environmental Education Centre, on the outskirts of Didcot. This is a beautiful haven for wildlife and a fantastic natural space where children enjoy hands-on discovery of nature through sound, smell, touch and taste. With the help of experienced and locally-based volunteers I’ve developed a new Sensory Wildlife Garden at SCEEC. This will give children an intimate space where they can be immersed in the scents, textures, sounds and colours of plants, as well as providing new wildlife refuges especially for pollinating insects.

I worked with Ceri Cadwallader, environmental education manager at SCEEC, to design the Sensory Wildlife Garden, making it large enough for groups of children to explore, and small enough to inspire people to create a similar area in their own gardens at home.

Creating a garden on a nature reserve full of wildlife is a challenge!

Having found the right spot on the edge of the meadow that’s already used as an outdoor classroom, and close enough to the woodland and ponds for a variety of insects to be attracted to the plants, we then needed a rabbit-proof fence. This meant digging an 18-inch deep trench and lining it with chicken wire fencing to keep out the rabbits.

To create a vibrant combination of plants we’ve built eight raised beds of different shapes and heights, each filled with different soil types that are appropriate to the plants that will soon be growing there.

Herbs with pungent leaves, like the low-growing evergreen thymes, prefer dry conditions, and wild marjoram grows into spreading bushes on well-drained chalky soils. Rosemary, one of the earliest flowering herbs, prefers a dry and sunny spot where it can grow tall. During the summer children will be able to brush by these herbs to appreciate the different aromatic scents, and watch bees and butterflies feeding on the flowers’ nectar.

More than 5,500 children visit Sutton Courtenay Environmental Education Centre every year, usually in school groups where they’re learning about nature at the same time as following National Curriculum subjects.

The Sensory Wildlife Garden will create colour and interest, food and shelter for wildlife, natural stimulation for the senses and help the children to discover how different plants grow. Perennials such as ice plant or sedum are just as good for wildlife as tall hemp agrimony and sunflowers that flower from seed.

Children and wildlife love colourful plants such as the bright blue flowers of borage, that are very attractive to bumblebees, and the rattling seed heads of nigella that sound like mini-maracas.

The project to design the garden from scratch, make it rabbit-proof, build and fill the raised beds has been a ‘vertical learning curve’ for me and I couldn’t have done it without the help of our fantastic volunteers. Wildlife gardening, salvage and cele-brating the sensory nature of plants is right up my street and I hope the Sensory Wildlife Garden will prove to be a hit with visiting children.