Meet The Morton:Pattison Team
Our major asset is our staff, delivering work through a team of professional, skilled people drawn from the conservation, construction, landscape, agriculture and tree surgery industries.
Prior to forming the Company in 2015 the two Directors developed their careers working for organisations including the Wildlife Trusts, the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. In these roles they developed expertise in construction, environmental education, land management, ecological monitoring, reserve and visitor centre design, captive rearing and species reintroductions.
Paul Pattison Managing Director
Paul is a Chartered Member of the Landscape Institute (CMLI) with over 20 years of experience in construction, land management and landscape design for biodiversity and people.
With a BSc (hons) degree in Zoology and a Countryside Management post-graduate, Paul has spent many years working on design and delivery of projects on nature reserves, parks, visitor centres and gardens as well as behind-the-scenes conservation breeding facilities. Beginning a career in biodiversity surveying and reserve management with the Wildlife Trusts, subsequent employers have included the RSPB and WWT along with private gardens and estates, as well as undertaking independent contracting and design work. During this time he has been fortunate to work on some high profile projects including the Great Crane Project, Saving the Spoon-billed Sandpiper and a new 1,000 acre coastal reserve at WWT Steart Marshes in Somerset.
Mike Morton Managing Director
Mike is a full Member of the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (MCIEEM) with more than 20 years of experience in landscape and ecological management.
Mike has a BSc (hons) degree in Biological Sciences. Prior to establishing Morton : Pattison he spent much of his career as a reserves manager for the Wildlife Trusts after working in environmental education in both the UK and Kenya. Along with designing and implementing habitat management programmes, ecological monitoring and site management plans Mike is a successful manager of large scale habitat restoration and capital works projects.
Jonny Fawcett Senior Projects Officer
Jonny is pivotal to design and project management across the broad spectrum of our professional services work, while also supporting our two Project Officers.
Initially joining Morton : Pattison as an Operative on the ground in 2020, he is now our Senior Projects Officer. After completing a BSc in Ecology and Wildlife Conservation Jonny undertook a habitat management and ecological survey traineeship with Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust. He is an Associate member of the Landscape Institute, working towards Chartership.
Lawrie Protts Operations Co-Ordinator
With over 20 years in landscape and construction, Lawrie worked his way up from the ground to piloting 50 tonne piling rigs and 90 tonne 360 excavators
Using his diverse experience working on civils, construction and landscape projects, Lawrie now organises the day-to-day logistics of Morton : Pattison as Operations Co-ordinator. He remains involved in hands-on project delivery as a Site Supervisor, and has led on several of our larger flagship projects.
Katie Wakefield Office Manager
Katie is an experienced office and facilities manager who joined us in 2025 to optimise our systems and work flow - increasing our capacity as M:P continues to grow - and has quickly made herself indispensible.
Using her background in accountancy, human resources and facilities, Katie supports both our projects and our management operations. Her skills free up the office team to focus on winning, designing and delivering new and exciting projects.
Ali Blaney Projects Officer
Ali brings significant biodiversity land management experience to our team, most recently from her role as the Warden at RSPB Ham Wall in the Somerset Levels.
This experience has been developed over 15 years across various parts of the UK in Site Manager, Reserves Officer, and Warden roles with the RSPB and Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust. Alongside this site experience, academic study in Environmental Conservation at Oxford University has enabled Ali to develop an in-depth theoretical knowledge.
Kier Allen Projects Officer
Kier brings practical solutions to project delivery from experience developed onsite over several years of landscape and forestry works.
Kier previously worked in commercial forestry in Scotland and Ireland in power line clearance, harvesting, replanting, and restoring clear fell sites before joining us as a Countryside Operative. Promoted to Site Supervisor and then appointed as Projects Officer, Kier uses his diverse experience leading on construction, habitat management and restoration projects to ensure that we achieve our objectives.
Stuart Whitton Construction Lead
Stuart has over 15 years of diverse experience in the civils and construction industry and holds himself and the team to the highest standards.
Initially training as a carpenter before joining the RAF, Stuart subsequently worked on house building sites and can confidently see projects from groundworks to final finish. His dedication and breadth of knowledge has seen him progress at Morton : Pattison from Machine Operator to Site Supervisor to Construction Lead, where he now advises our team on all things construction.
Jamie Beacham Site Supervisor
Jamie is a qualified tree surgeon and has been working with Morton : Pattison for many years now, having started with us during the winter seasons on large-scale habitat management.
Now a Site Supervisor, Jamie brings his arboricultural experience to bear across our projects as he leads on the delivery of our tree and vegetation works. As our lead climber, he plays a key role in training newer members of the team in chainsaw and habitat management operations.
Dan George Site Supervisor
Dan brings significant experience in agricultural operations and ground care to our team.
Dan's knowledge has been developed over 15 years, initially for the local authority Countryside Service before working as a sub-contractor in the landscape groundcare industry. Joining us as a Machine Operator, Dan's calm can-do manner has seen him promoted to Site Supervisor. As well as working for Morton : Pattison Dan runs his own farm on which he lives.
The site team Machinery & site operatives
Our team of machinery and site operatives are highly skilled, bringing a range of experience from various industries to our projects.
With backgrounds ranging from tree surgery and construction to ecology and landscape, our site teams ensure that we get the work done on the ground.
Client testimonial
“It is a great pleasure working with Paul and his team at Morton : Pattison, they provide a unique service bringing both ecological expertise and practical delivery to our ecological projects. They have done several LEMP remedial and planting projects on our solar farms which has enhanced the ecological value of the sites. Their team have excellent communication skills and are organised, always providing a clear schedule. They are able to follow the rigorous safety protocols involved with working on an operational power plant. Following the works they provide reports and photos in a timely fashion. They diligently deliver planting maintenance programmes ensuring the success of works carried out. We hope to continue working with them on many more projects”
- Hertha Wood, Land Management Co-ordinator, RES
Our story
Directors Mike Morton and Paul Pattison first discussed the idea of establishing the company while studying biology and zoology respectively at Southampton University in 2001. Meeting for the first time in a Spanish sandstorm on an ecology field trip, their shared enthusiasm for the natural world became apparent over the next few years as they then graduated and worked in various outdoor roles before starting wildlife traineeships with Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust in 2006.
In 2014 Paul qualified as a Chartered Member of the Landscape Institute...
...while working as a project manager and designer for the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust. This was the catalyst to establish his own freelance design and contracting business. Shortly afterwards Mike left his role of several years working as a Reserves Manager for Hampshire Wildlife Trust, and in February 2015 Morton : Pattison was incorporated.
In 2015 Mike was accepted as a full Member of the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management...
...and we initially worked on small contracts for winter habitat management and spring reserve infrastructure works. In the summer of 2015 we took on our first employee to help with our first ‘large’ project involving paths, boardwalk, kissing gates and riverbank stabilisation for the Deadwater Valley Trust in Bordon. We continue to regularly work for the Trust today as they too have grown in project scale and team size.
Habitat management contracts grew in size and over the following winter we took on more seasonal employees and scaled back during the summer, a pattern that continued for a couple of years before filling our summer workbook. In particular this was aided by steadily expanding our renewable energy sector work, fulfilling ecological planning conditions on a number of solar farms that were completed in 2015 before UK feed-in tariffs became less favourable.
Design and consultancy services expanded hand-in-hand with this renewables work...
...as we made improvements to some of the landscape and ecology management plans we had been appointed to deliver, tailoring work to better suit the individual sites, reduce client costs and improve biodiversity outcomes. Throughout this period we began to win a greater diversity of professional services work, with projects including surveying, flagship nature reserve master planning, natural flood management schemes, designing outdoor school learning environments and numerous design and build works.
The experience and capabilities we had developed over the preceding years, combined with a steady small team of staff, allowed us to win appointment to various county council frameworks, enabling us to level up and start to deliver a greater volume of work.
The previous few years had seen a few visitor centre landscape projects...
...but our first significant visitor centre design and build project was won in 2019 and delivered on site at WWT Arundel wetlands centre under challenging conditions during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
The subsequent years have been marked by a substantial increase in scale and complexity of projects, in particular as they began to incorporate engineering works such as large scale bridges, groundworks and piling with associated increases to staffing, equipment and vehicles.
We are currently up to a team of a eighteen staff and in 2024 moved into our fourth, much larger premises, which will provide us with the space that we need to grow over the next few years as we continue to scale up the business and invest in our equipment, team and accreditations.