Living Root Garden School • Plants & How They Grow • Name: ______________________
🔍 The Case
The case of the lawn that fed nobody — one corner went wild and suddenly bees, butterflies, and birds moved in. What changed?
Coreopsis is Florida's state wildflower — golden-yellow, daisy-shaped, and everywhere once you start looking: roadsides, meadows, open fields, all over the state. When you see a roadside blazing yellow in spring, you are probably looking at coreopsis.
Blanketflower looks like a sunset decided to be a flower: red centers bleeding into yellow tips, on plants that love sun, sand, and neglect. Black-eyed Susans are golden petals around a dark brown center, blooming big and blooming long for bees, butterflies, and beetles.
Sunshine mimosa is the shy one: a groundcover with pink powder-puff flowers and leaves that fold up when you touch them. It is not scared — folding makes the leaf less tasty-looking and less easy to grab, and it costs the plant almost nothing.
Rule out the lookalikes: a lawn is a desert with good PR — green, neat, and almost nothing lives in it. A meadow of mixed wildflowers feeds pollinators for months because different flowers bloom at different times and the buffet never closes. And the rule for wildflowers in natural areas is look, don't pick: photograph them, identify them, leave them growing — buy nursery-grown natives, never dig wild plants up.
Ask: If you watch a wild patch and a lawn for fifteen minutes each, which one will get more pollinator visits — and by how much? Write your guess before you watch.
Try: Survey a wild patch without picking anything: note what is blooming, what colors, and what is visiting — then sit still for fifteen minutes and count every visitor.
Stretch (Teens & Growers ready for more): Compare pollinator visits: fifteen minutes at the wild patch vs. fifteen minutes on a lawn, same day.
Tell: Fill in the log below — date, what was blooming, what visited — then finish this sentence in words or a labeled drawing: “The wild patch fed ___ because ___.”
Date
What I saw
What surprised me
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
Date: ____/____/____
🛠️ Build It
Draw the wild patch as a restaurant menu for pollinators — which flower is the house special?
🗣️ Be the Teacher
Tell someone why a wildflower patch feeds more creatures than a lawn — in your own words.
🏅 I can…
☐ I can spot Florida's state wildflower.
Portfolio check
☐ Guide read
☐ Case solved
☐ Ask, Try, Tell done
☐ Build It filed: Wild patch survey
☐ Taught someone
☐ Badge earned: I can spot Florida's state wildflower.
Living Root Garden School • livingrootgarden.com/homeschool/ • Free — print as many copies as you like. File this sheet with your portfolio log. Sprouts do the Read, the Case, and Build It; Growers try the Ask, Try, Tell stretch when ready; Teens do the whole packet — including teaching it back.