This campaign calls for a Human Shrub

HE calls himself the Human Shrub, and the camouflaged campaigner wants his local council to turn over a new leaf.
In recent years his guerrilla gardening tactics have turned neglected municipal plots in Colchester, Essex, into wildlife-friendly green oases.
I reckon a visit from this eccentric eco-hero could be just what’s needed in Harnham.
Otherwise the lovely meadows on the corner of Britford Lane with their unspoilt views of our cathedral may soon be just a memory, an archive photo in the reference library, uprooted to make way for 100 ‘high quality’ homes.
The vast majority of people I’ve spoken to, and those who’ve commented on the Journal website, share my sadness at the prospect of this wanton destruction.
The land is what’s known as a ‘windfall site’ in council jargon, since it hadn’t previously been publicly earmarked for large-scale housing by the planners but just kind of fell into their hands like an overripe apple.
Well, development would certainly mean a massive windfall for the owners - the Longford Estate and St Nicholas Hospital - and for the builders, if not for the neighbours whose environment would be ruined.
Their new Facebook campaign, Save The Meadows, has sprouted 660-plus supporters, and a petition has been launched on change.org.
Many have pointed out that these fields are extremely boggy in the winter and the water has to go somewhere.
The developers argue that they are not officially part of our flood plain. But officialdom’s definition of flood plain so often seems at variance with the reality experienced by local people.
The proposed hotel and drive-thru next to Tesco spring to mind.
The meadows are not quite in the heart of Salisbury, if you choose to define our city purely in terms of historic buildings.
But they are a vital part of its green lung – the network of undeveloped sites which gives the place its character, its sense of space and scale, and its wild creatures a refuge.
While I’m on the subject, keen as the building industry is to persuade us otherwise, it needs to understand that you can’t just designate the odd acre of land here and there as a nature park and expect birds, bees and butterflies to thrive.
They need safe corridors through our urban jungle.
A couple of weeks ago I found a dead otter in Harnham. It had been run over.
We’ll be a lot less likely to see otters, dead or alive, if we lose the meadows.
Save them, don’t pave them.