Nature Heroes: Seed Seeker Trail at Wakehurst

PR – Tickets Gifted¦ On Saturday we headed down to Wakehurst, Kew’s wild botanic garden in Sussex, for some October half term fun! National Geographic Kids Magazine have teamed up with them for the 9th of their Nature Heroes activities. Our children really enjoyed this October half term’s Seed Seeker mission, which took us on a fun and interactive trail.

Millennium Seed Bank

Before we began the trail, we paid the Millennium Seed Bank a visit. It the world’s largest store of wild plant seeds. It has a collection of over 2.4 billion seeds from over 40,000 different species under your feet. This collection allows scientists to help prevent plants from going extinct and make important contributions to the future of food and medicine. It was so interesting to see the process that seeds go through to preserve them, as well as some examples of seeds.

Wakehurst Millennium Seed Bank, Visual Air © RBG Kew

Nature Heroes: Seed Seeker Trail

With the importance of the seeds in the Millennium Seed Bank freshly in our minds, the children collected their trail sheets and pencils and embarked on the trail. It began with a 2 metre tall walkie-talkie which encouraged them on their mission to bank a mystery seed.

Reuben was excited to show us which way we needed to go, excitedly pointing at each of the arrows and yelling “It says we need to go this way!” The trail was full of hands on activities. These included code breaking, feely boxes, spying creatures through binoculars and ‘weird but true’ trivia questions.

Both children thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m sure my little Nature Heroes didn’t realise how much they were learning along the way! When we got to the end, they had to dig for their seed and clean it with a brush. Then they posted their seeds into the seed bank at the same time so that they could race. Autumn found the whole thing so exciting, she didn’t even mind that Reuben’s got to the bottom first!)

Mission complete, they both gained their Seed Seeker badge!

Autumn Colours

Right by the end of the trail was a picnic area, perfectly placed for us to tuck into our packed lunches. The trail had taken us a little bit over an hour at a gentle pace and we were hungry!

Re-energised, we set out exploring the rest of the botanical gardens and sought out some autumnal colours. For me, there’s nothing quite like seeing the autumn leaves reflected in lakes or ponds. If you can hear a waterfall, even better!

The gardens are really beautiful and I’d love to see them in other seasons too.

More Information

The Nature Heroes: Seed Seeker trail runs from Saturday 19th October to Sunday 3rd November. The badge mission costs £3 and needs to be pre-booked.

Adult entry to Wakehurst is £16.50 (members free), young people (17 – 25 years) are £8.25 and 16 year olds and under go free.

Cover photo credit: Wakehurst’s Nature Heroes, Jim Holden © RBG Kew