Column: Green campaigner Laurel Spooner has been out and about with her measuring tape, checking the size of oak trees across Colchester. It followed her challenge to Gazette readers to find the oldest oak in the borough. Paul Stickland was the winner and has generously donated his £40 prize to the Woodland Trust

CONGRATULATIONS to Paul Stickland for winning our oldest oak tree competition.

Paul identified a tremendous old tree and has kindly donated his £40 winnings to the Woodland Trust.

With a circumference measuring 548cm, it has an estimated age of 430 years.

However, it is really much older because half the trunk is missing.

It must have sprouted from an acorn well before Henry VIII was King of the Realm, lording it over less than four million subjects who were way outnumbered by deer and wild boar.

It was a very different world.

You can find “The Wick Oak” - Paul's winning entry - where a footpath crosses Birch Brook.

What a tragedy the Wick, a much-loved green space and rare habitat, serving a swathe of housing estates, is earmarked for 1,000 new homes in the borough council’s local plan.

I want it to be a country park like Highwoods, on the opposite side of our 'city town'.

Highwoods serves old and now many new estates.

If more estates really should be built in overdeveloped south Colchester, everyone would benefit from the Wick Country Park.

The Wick is a fitting gift to the town from the MOD.

Local people have made the army welcome, tolerating gunfire on the ranges, noisy helicopters overhead and many other inconveniences, willingly, for the most part.

Wikipedia confirms Colchester has been a Garrison town since Roman times, so a gift so green and beautiful in return, bringing health and happiness, seems only fair.

More to the point, recent revelations over MOD spending, which have “deeply shocked" the Government, show spending funding properly would make the armed forces massive savings.

Gazette:

Green campaigner Laurel Spooner

There is no need to sell the Wick to developers for a sum so small in comparison.

Covid lockdown was a punishing way to rediscover our dependence on nature for physical and particularly mental wellbeing.

Google “improving access to green space” and you find the Government’s own reports detailing evidence and future policy.

One statistic made me marvel - Sheffield city saves £34 on healthcare for every £1 spent on their parks but I can’t begin to explain how they measured that.

Look at the Wick oak and see that more of it is back in the ground than above it.

The earth is re-enriched by the work of thousands of species, from the woodpecker to the stag beetle to micro-organisms with unpronounceable names.

During this recycling, the tree provides homes for the massive biodiversity of species which have all the mod cons of ours - shelter, central heating, a store cupboard in the kitchen, a bedroom and a toilet.

The tree itself doesn’t do it directly for all its guests.

They form their own communities and do things for each other through intricate networks.

Truthfully, this was how I was explaining eco-systems to a Reception class when the teacher told me it was the first time he had understood it himself!

However, anyone who feels I’ve insulted their intelligence please accept my apologies.

Gazette: The Fingringhoe oak - this was the true champion tree and is thought to be more than 600 years old

The Fingringhoe oak - this was the true champion tree and is thought to be more than 600 years old

We had a dark horse in the oldest oak competition.

The Wick oak has won, but the Fingringhoe oak is the true holder of the title of “Colchester borough’s champion oak”.

No-one entered it, unfortunately, but Jonathan Forsyth, originally born in Fingringhoe and seriously knowledgeable about ancient trees, wrote suggesting I measure it.

I found it to be over 600 years old.

The story goes that it grew from an acorn placed in the mouth of a pirate hung and buried on the village green.

Surely gruesome enough to get my grandchildren interested!

Have a happy eco Easter.

My advice on the best way to do this is to look at the Eco Colchester website - www.ecocolchester.org.uk

Search homelife, then greengrocers and eco shops.

You can have a delicious Sunday lunch, responsibly sourced, ethically produced and planet-friendly - everything to help you consume sustainably.

So, enjoy yourself while ensuring a safe future for those you love…and why not the other eight billion humans on the planet?

As for ethical Easter eggs, they come up on every major supermarket website.

Perhaps some are a con, but that’s life.

What is clear is that consumer power is working -and my hopes this Easter are real.

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