First year St Bricin's student warns against using wildflower mixes

Eoin Slattery was the sole man involved in the project 'Wild(mix) Attraction', which uncovered pollinator preferences in wildflower mixes.

The St Bricin's College student received a display award at this year's BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition.

Eoin delved into different wildflower seed mixes to determine if they were pollinator friendly. His project was displayed in the Biological and Ecological Sciences section of the exhibit.

“Basically my project is about the relationship between pollinators and native wildflowers, what these unregulated seed mixes are doing to our native wildflowers and exploring practical solutions to restore natural habitats to restore declining pollinator populations.”

During research, Eoin found that wildflower seed mixes contain 25% of native wildflower plants and don’t explain where the others are from. He also found that they are “changing and destroying” native wildflowers.

“They are good for the pollinators but there is other ways to be good for the pollinators,” he pointed out, listing mowing the grass less and if the government introduced stricter regulations on wildflower seed mixes.

“If you want to plant wildflower seed mixes you could just take some seeds from the wildflowers because there’s hundreds of seeds just in one wildflower.

“Also it’s free so you don’t have to spend any money so everyone will be happy with that.”

Eoin has been gardening since a young age.

“When I found out that these wildflower mixes were destroying our native wildflowers I thought it was very unfair.”