Plant your own Flowers of Recovery

THATCHAM residents are invited to contribute to a public display as the town looks to grow back stronger after the third lockdown.

Flowers of Recovery is a new community installation from the town council to mark the easing out of lockdown and businesses reopening.

Families and community organisations are encouraged to make their own spring flowers – symbols of renewal and hope – from plastic found at home and plant them in Broadway Green to create a blanket of colour between today (Thursday) and May 3.

The project is designed to be ecofriendly, with the flowers to be repurposed. Free garden canes to make the stalk from can be picked up from Thatcham Broadway Co-op, Newbury Building Society, High Street, Thatcham, or Waitrose, Thatcham.

Thatcham Park and Parsons Down schools, Swings & Smiles, Thatcham Family Hub, U3A, 2nd Thatcham Scouts, Thatcham Preschool and Hackspace are all taking part.

At a meeting last week, mayor Mike Cole said: “The timing is geared towards the reopening of the High Street, so the idea is we will hopefully have some flowers by then and give some joint publicity to the High Street reopening for business and the amazing range of independent shops we have.”

Events manager John Sackett said people would be encouraged to pick up what they had made. Any flowers left would be replanted in the town council garden.

Mr Cole added that the council would recycle what it could. The town council advised to only paint the outside of the flowers and not use embellishments, such as glitter.

The flower can then be re-purposed into an eco-friendly feeder.

Instructions and a video tutorial can be found on Thatcham Town Council’s Facebook and YouTube pages.