Spaces for Nature

These lovely adjacent nature reserves are on the edge of RBWM in close proximity to Heathrow. Part of the Colne Valley Regional Park, you can find a gorgeous poplar lined woodland trail and a series of small lagoons with a biodiversity of wildflowers encasing them. The Natural Environment Team are working to maintain a high species diversity, by adjusting cutting regimes - stopping the overdominance of species like hemlock and nettle. Come here for wetlands, woodland, scrub and fantastic birdwatching.

Our new Ranger Tom and the team have been working hard to make Braywick Nature Centre garden an exemplar of wildlife gardening.

We have wildlife flowers growing across the lawn, plenty of large logs acting as dead wood, an orchard area, silver birch trees, pollinator friendly shrubs, wildflowers and a native hedge perimeter.

Fresh and organically grown produce is going to feature in our environmental education programme, show demonstrate pollination and ways to utilise human and wildlife's needs in a space.

A wonderful Windsor resident donated funds for 3000 gorgeous spring bulbs planted at Trinity Wildlife Area. These snowdrops were planted just at the start of February 2022 and were blooming all early spring! Head over to Trinity to see how the beautiful new area.

To help protect wildfowl from the newly created footpath across the Causeway at Battlemead, a wildlife screen has begun creation. The majority of this work was undertaken by an amazing team from Wild Maidenhead during January.

There has been plenty of other planting work happening at Battlmead over the last few years. WildCookham and Wild Maidenhead have helped place numerous native whips over the West Field. In 2017, along the riverside many groups helped to plant a 850m wildlife hedge made of 4500 native British whips. This will grow into an important habitat and wildlife corridor for many animals.

We are excited to continue to support Battlemead's habitats (woodland, wetland, conservation grass and scrub) to develop and thrive in the future.

Sutherland Grange is one of RBWM's designated Local Nature Reserves. Because a part of the site was historically grazed, the grassland is biodiverse and gets this designation.

Wild Windsor, one of our local conservation groups, recently planted 100 new trees at Sutherland Grange. This fantastic project will help create pockets of habitat amongst the mown grass, as well as providing interesting features across the reserve.

The image shows long time Windsor resident Tim Dodd planting the first tree.

Over 3 years at Thrift Wood, Ockwells Park, 15,000 trees are being planted to aid nature recovery.

As part of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee Tree Planting Celebration, RBWM organised a family tree planting day at on the 15th January 2022. About 250 volunteers from the public came along and we planted over 600 trees!

Our trees were all native species such as Hawthorn, Oak, and Hazel to ensure plenty of wildlife can enjoy them.

Oaken Grove in Maidenhead has had installed a number of features for wildlife and public enjoyment. The Sir Nicholas Winton Memorial Gardens, commemorating the man responsible for the incredible 'Kindertransport' project during the second World War, contain various plantings and features.

The ponds have been naturalised by adding native, oxygenating flora in planter baskets and creating hedgehog ladders around it. We are continuing to improve the pond habitat by enabling it to become more wildlife friendly.

Battlemead is one of our largest reserves, stunningly set on the boundary of Maidenhead and Cookham.

Because we have lost many of our larger and older trees, which would contain helpful cavities for bird homes, bird boxes are really useful for natural conservation.

So in March 2021, as part of a collaborative project between RBWM, WildCookham and WildSL6, 27 blue tit boxes and various barn owl boxes were positioned across Battlemead.

These were investigated in November 2021 and to our delight we found at least 50% had been occupied over the year. We are excited to continue monitor the boxes and carry on implementation across other reserves.