This idea has come to me as I have been trying to come to terms with the fact that much as we still prize our home, and the space, beauty and birdlife that we have enjoyed here for over thirty years, we no longer need the spacious converted barn and enormous garden, and are no longer physically capable of looking after them adequately. However, having said this, I find it difficult even to consider the idea of spending the rest of my life in a tiny house or flat with little or no garden and no intimate relationship with any wildlife or practical association with the desperate needs and problems of our environment.
The project would be self-financing by the sale of these dwelling units, a dozen or so per reserve. The title deeds would grant exclusive rights to the ownership of the dwelling unit and the relatively small private garden area immediately surrounding it, together with an entitlement to share in the use and enjoyment of the whole of the wildlife area of the reserve, and membership of the committee of 'fellow owners', responsible for the planning and management of the whole project.
The residents would quickly form a homogenous group, working together (if they had the ability and the inclination), creating and maintaining the surroundings - which could also make a suitable setting for stroke patients or the disabled. I anticipate that there would be a rush of applicants for places, once the first of these projects had become fully functional.
Within each reserve it would be necessary to construct a network of sound, all-weather walkways, each wide enough to accommodate wheelchairs, and these would criss-cross the whole of the area and link in all the dwelling units. Some of these walkways could be bordered by plants set out to provide a feast of colour or scent, with the effect accentuated by interplanting spectacular garden varieties of native trees, shrubs and climbers.
It will be essential to include within the nature reserve a selection of realistic small glades and varied patches of impenetrable thickets. The immediate aim must be to reproduce a wide range of settings within which a variety of resident birds and returning migrants might be attracted, and where all suitable varieties of native plants will flourish, act as hosts and sustain all possible varieties of native insects.
Stanley Slee, French's Farm, Hempstead, Saffron Walden, Essex CB10 2NZ (tel 079986 284). This proposal won a Social Inventions Award.