Unique town centre wild garden the focus of special event

A unique wild garden in Colchester town centre is the focus of a special free event featuring performance, conversation and ecology.

The event - Beth Chatto’s Meanwhile Garden: The Urban Wild & Other Disturbances - is centred on the Meanwhile Garden located next to Firstsite arts venue.

Whilst awaiting development, this abandoned brownfield site has become a space where nature is reclaiming the landscape, with wild plants, mosses, bees and other species establishing themselves.

“The garden’s ecology is part-planned and part urban wilderness,” explained the event’s co-ordinator Dr Tony Sampson, from Essex Business School. “The Meanwhile gardener (David Gates) works on the project for Beth Chatto Gardens. He does not conserve or preserve the garden. He allows urban disturbances, like those caused by skateboarders, to disrupt stability and prepare the ground for the kind of renewal necessary for biodiversity to happen.”

This free and open-to-all event, at the Common Ground at the Minories in Colchester High Street, is an offshoot of the Wild Essex Imaginarium Project. It brings together University of Essex-based postgraduate researchers in science and film with local artists, ecologists, cultural practitioners and community advocates to broaden understanding of nature recovery and wild urban “disturbance”.

It will explore how urban nature, community imagination and creativity can all draw on disturbance, disruption, interruption and improvisation to create something unexpected and surprising.

The event also ties in with an Innovation Fund grant Dr Sampson secured along with University of Essex colleague Professor Tom Cameron, to support Uttlesford District Council deliver the Local Nature Recovery Strategy, which sets out priorities for nature recovery across Greater Essex.

Explained Dr Sampson: “Given the challenge of biodiversity loss, hyper-local community action is required at scale across all parts of Essex. This includes at a community level, with local charities, groups and parish councils all needing to step up and deliver relevant programmes in their areas.”

A highlight of the evening is a session titled “The Science of Disturbance”, featuring postgraduate researchers Dhruti Bell and Kristina Chilver, who will share insights into how ecological data, habitat dynamics and community-based scientific methods can intersect with creative practice.

With a background in ecological consultancy and coastal field research, Kristina’s work focuses on nature-based solutions for ecosystem restoration and climate resilience.

“I find the concept behind this event particularly compelling, as it reframes disturbance as a positive force that can enable regeneration and promote new forms of biodiversity. I hope that more locations might adopt similar approaches,” she said.

Photo courtesy of Beth Chatto Plants and Gardens

• Beth Chatto’s Meanwhile Garden: The Urban Wild & Other Disturbances is on Thursday 12 February at The Common Ground at the Minories in Colchester High Street from 6.30pm-10.00pm. Entry is free but please book here.