Community Wildflower Border

2020 has been such an unprecedented year that the Trustees want to add something to the Field to commemorate the wonderful community of Mortimer. In unison with our aims for improving use of the Field and to further our goals for increasing biodiversity and habitat we are going to construct two 'Community Wildflower Borders' along the western edge of the field separated in the middle with an access way.

Working with Berks & Bucks Wildlife Trust, Englefield Estate and field stakeholders we will create a significant space for wild flowers, bees, beetles, other insects and other wildlife. We will create backing for the borders with local tree trunks ~1.5m from the existing fence line (to allow for maintenance) and approximately 90m in length, as shown below.

The access way between each border will feature a hedgehog tunnel beneath linking the two borders to encourage these endangered creatures. The border front edges will swoop in front of the tree trunks to create the border area 3-5m deep which will be planted a diverse set of local wildflowers of which some will grow to a maximum of 1m high. Views from neighbouring properties will be enhanced not obscured. 

Update - 2/11/2020

After a delay in removing some property from the site, we have got the first stage of our border in place!

We're very excited and will be continuing with some site works over the next few days.

The delay means that we have missed the seeding window, but we will be running our seeding event in the Spring.

Works between now and seeding:

• Mow and tidy the maintenance strip between the logs and existing fence line.
• Mark and prepare the border shape
• Rotavate the initial beds to reduce grass growth

These works will make the back of the border tidy, but the front may look a little messy until we get seeds in and growth going.

We're sorry about that, there's not much we can do about it.

Get Involved

Whilst the main layout work will be carried out by skilled personnel we would like the whole of Mortimer to be able take part in the creation of this project and so we have created opportunities for everyone to get involved.

• Blue Biscuits. As this is a rewilding project we're aligning with the Blue Campaign for rewilding. In honour of the Palmer family's generosity in gifting the field to the village we are going to use blue biscuit shapes rather than hearts to let families and individuals write their names on a 'biscuit' to show they care about the environment in Mortimer. Drop us a line if you want to have a Blue Biscuit in the border.
• Seeding Day(s). Once the border has been created, we will announce a seeding day sometime in September where anyone can come and help us spread the seed. In the first year we will spread annual seeds and then following that next year with more perennial mixes. We'll have the MFC Club House open for refreshments to make the day a local family 
   

Funding

We are funding most of the work from our reserves but if you can help us with any aspect of funding we would be delighted to hear from you.