Following on from our successful weekend event in 2024, Wild Cookham is organising a major two-week Cookham-wide series of nature-focussed events to link into the National Garden Wildlife Week this summer. This annual event is promoted by ARK, (https://www.arkwildlife.co.uk/pages/national-garden-wildlife-week-uk) whereby residents are afforded the opportunity to record all the birds, animals, insects and plants they can identify in their gardens during that period.

With disastrous declines of our traditional wildlife on farmland and open countryside, our gardens are quickly becoming the only haven for many of our pollinators and other creatures. Our objective is for homeowners to become more confident in noting what creatures thrive in their gardens, to use resources to help identify them, and for children to be encouraged to look more closely at the natural beauty around them.

Another significant objective of our project is to encourage more home-owners to create ponds and wildlife-friendly habitats in their gardens to maximise their value to our remaining species. And with the next generation in mind, we will be offering the four local schools resources and talks to help them too become fully engaged in this important issue.

We actually embark on this season of activity a few days before the ARK week, by commencing on Global Bee Day (May 20th) with walks and talks on these essential insects by invited specialists. This will be followed by a Dawn Chorus event next day and then several other days of events, including walks and talks by insect specialist, Penny Frith-Metal. We end this festival of activity with a talk on the fascinating Glow-worm, just prior to our season of surveying our local population of this scarce creature.

Resources Needed
To maximise the effectiveness of our activities, we will need to create a host of information materials, posters and leaflets, advertising and imagery. This will be used in magazines and news items already in place in the community, for leaflet drops and newsletters for our schools.
Artwork costs - ​​£125.00
Printing costs - ​​c£220.00
Web site work - ​£100.00
3 x Hall Hire - ​​£240.00
Pond-making booklets - £100.00
Schools’ seed packs - ​£190,00
​Approx Total - ​£975.00


There will also be speakers fees, travel and hall costs to cover.
We anticipate that this promotional material, web site work and provision of identification guides of various kinds, and our general costs associated with events of this nature, will approximate £1,000, per details below.
If the Trustees of the Kings Hall Trust felt they could support our initiative once again, it would be greatly appreciated.

Yours Truly
Brian Clews
For WildCookham
118 Broom Hill, Cookham, Berks, SL6 9LQ
07860 290115
Brian.clews@btconnect.com
https://www.facebook.com/groups/wildcookham/
https://www.wildcookham.org.uk/
19th February 2025.