Column: Green campaigner Laurel Spooner gives an update on rewilding projects in Colchester. As she makes clear, everyone can do something to make a difference

A NEIGHBOUR has frogs in her pond, which is astonishing considering it's only been there four weeks.

We both live off Maldon Road and my pond, around 20 years old, is a breeding ground for newts and dragonflies.

The good news on ponds?

No garden is too small because just a washing up bowl will do.

A garden pond will increase biodiversity more than any other garden feature.

In particular, it will boost insect populations and encourage the return of the 'swoops' of swallows and 'flights' of bats which used to fill the skies above our gardens on summer evenings.

From small ponds, we move up the scale to the Irvine Road community orchard, also off Maldon Road, where the Residents' Association has been granted a 50-year free lease.

A major achievement has been encouraging stag beetles by keeping the stumps of old trees and building log pyramids, luckily just in time before lockdown.

Gazette:

Columnist Laurel Spooner

An infra-red camera has recorded a variety of nocturnal visitors using the orchard.

Along the footpath behind the orchard, the developer of part of the site, Lexden Restorations, followed the orchard committee’s advice, replanting the mixed hedgerow and leaving 'hedgehog gaps' in the boundary fence.

This is an example of a three-way partnership at work - community, developer and nature - which is urgently needed everywhere and which councils have a responsibility to facilitate.

Nearby is another footpath, Cambridge Walk, also known as Stag Beetle Alley, running behind Christchurch churchyard.

Christchurch Gardening Group is rewilding part of the church garden and residents are busy turning it into a green corridor.

Further along, work has started on a full-blown Dead Wood Nature Reserve.

When complete, it too will have log pyramids.

They are easy to build (see the People’s Trust for Endangered Species website).

The stag beetle, Britain’s largest beetle, spends most of its lifespan underground as a larva feeding on rotten wood.

After three to four years, the adults emerge to fly on summer evenings looking for a mate.

Gazette: Beetle stations - Wayne Baker rescued this stag beetle from the road

Beetlemania - stag beetles are drawn to the stumps of old trees and log pyramids Picture: WAYNE BAKER

The female must find a nesting site with an undisturbed supply of rotting wood - not easy if people keep tidying up.

Let’s help by leaving it for them.

Encourage the natural look and we all have more time to sit quietly and watch in an environment enriched by the comings and goings of the natural world.

Finally, don’t imagine rewilding is confined to the suburbs.

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Trinity Street, recently voted Colchester town centre’s most beautiful street, has a colony of lesser stag beetles in the Tudor garden of Tymperleys Tea Room.

The owners have made a conscious effort to encourage wildlife with guidance from ecologist George Adalopolous.

He has helped bird numbers and species increase so in this town centre oasis the delicious coffee and cake now comes with the best of British birdsong.