PUPILS from a village school turned out in droves to take part in a county-wide mass-planting initiative.

The initiative, called Big Plant Week, is the idea of the Cumbria Wildlife Trust.

The project aims to plant over 15,000 plants in one week across the county.

Over 100 groups have been resourced with wildflower 'plug plants', (the majority of which have been grown by Cumbria Wildlife Trust), locally sourced wildflower seed and other informational resources to run a wildflower planting event during the week, to transform a local outdoor space.

The areas being planted range from community allotments, school fields, urban planters to parks and nature reserves.

One such group is Irthington in Bloom, a group of green-fingered community members who managed to get their small village into the finals of the Britain in Bloom Awards - no small task.

The village's church, St Kentigern's, saw a small patch of land prepared for planting.

Around 75 schoolchildren from the local school, Irthington Village School, turned up to complete the plant of over 150 wildflowers, under the watchful and participatory eye of a representative from Cumbria Wildlife Trust, Ed Evans.

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Under instruction and guidance by headteacher Lynn Harrison, holes were dug with trowels, within which wildflower shoots and roots were planted, followed by a generous sprinkling of various seeds to add colour and variety, and to fill in some of the space.

Part of the aims of this project is to increase the number of pollinator species in Cumbria; flowers that pollinators like bees and butterflies particularly like were planted.

Mrs Harrison explained that the children were very excited to be taking part in this event.

This is not the only event they have planned to be involved in, as there is something in the works with the RSPB, where children will be shown how to make bird boxes.

They are also going to be planting perennial pollinator plants to replace their raised vegetable patch, and will be building some more bug hotels.

Ed Evans, who works for the Get Cumbria Buzzing project at Cumbria Wildlife Trust, said: "It's great to see the younger generation so interested and enthralled with nature because, at the end of the day, these children are the influencers of the future."

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