Cymbeline Meadow is nestled by Colchester train station

SOME people don’t believe it, but we have an example of sustainable farming in the centre of Colchester.

Sheep and cows graze below the main railway station - a soothing sight for drivers stuck in traffic.

Cymbeline Meadow is both a nature reserve belonging to Colchester Council and a working farm.

Go here to see practices like field margins, hedgerow management, crop rotation and livestock grazing.

Farming this way increases the wildlife sharing the site - the key to maintaining its balance and fertility for future generations.

More is not taken from the environment than it can replenish.

Indeed, it’s now been proven that sustainable methods harnessing natural processes can even improve yields beyond farming with chemical fertilisers and pest control.

Producing food this way cuts emissions dramatically and can even absorb them into the soil.

A farm can be carbon neutral, even negative, and still highly productive.

It’s a massive breakthrough because, until now, it’s taken more and more fertiliser to feed the world’s population.

The excess nitrogen we apply which plants cannot use escapes into the air as nitrous oxide.

This is a nasty greenhouse gas roughly 300 times as potent as carbon dioxide, though it does break down more quickly.

To see what’s going on, walk round Cymbeline Meadow yourself and spread the word.

The background information is HERE.

Key role - Tim Clarke is a volunteer warden at Cymbeline Meadows

How can you help?

Eat sustainably produced, unprocessed food and you will be supporting this type of farming.

Odds are you will live a longer, healthier life if you read the packet and look for organic, sustainable, whole foods which have not been chemically messed about by the addition of emulsifiers, flavourings, preservatives and supplemented with extra fat, sugar and salt.

Almost all of it is unnecessary and harmful to the consumer and environment.

Over the last 40 years, these developments in food processing have unfortunately been the main cause of the obesity epidemic, which is far and away a more serious long-term threat than the Covid pandemic.

Gloucestershire has begun a project to create six “wild towns” with sites like Cymbeline Meadow.

This shows how far-sighted Colchester Council was back in 1988 when it bought the meadow, creating this example of how the public, wildlife and agriculture can flourish together.

The wildflower meadows were created from arable fields for livestock to graze.

In winter, this area acts as a flood plain.

Wild field margins provide crop pollinators and predators for crop pests.

Hedges provide cover and nesting sites and gardeners can do these things on a small scale - leave the hedge a little higher, the lawn a little longer, make a pond and a small, wild area.

The Environment Agency looks after the river, but Essex Wildlife Trust runs a River Warden scheme.

Tim Clarke has been the volunteer warden for the last eight years.

Columnist Laurel Spooner

Tim told me he was a “birder” when he joined the trust ten years ago and widened his interests by doing the water vole and otter survey training courses.

Now he keeps an eye out for pollution of the river and notifies the Environment Agency if there are problems.

If he spots invasive species such as mink, who eat the water voles, or the plant Himalayan balsam, Tim informs Essex Wildlife Trust.

For general maintenance problems he liaises with the borough council’s ranger team at Highwoods Country Park.

More volunteers are always welcomed by both Essex Wildlife Trust and the borough council.

I hope the newly-elected council repeats the Cymbeline Meadow example, in spite of the pressures on the town.

As it grows, we need more spaces, not less.

So where could the next be created?

The Wick (Middlewick Ranges), in south Colchester, would be ideal as another Highwoods-style country park, but it’s under review for 1,000 houses.

It’s a great pity to build on it but, if essential to have some housing, the council could pioneer a smaller, state-of-the-art sustainable estate set in a nature reserve.

This would prove again that it’s possible to meet human needs and let nature flourish.

It could become a “Colchester Garden of Eden project”. What an example that would be?

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