Welcome to CCBS

Welcome to CCBS.

Please help us raise the funds to buy and run Wakelyns – the internationally recognised long term organic agroforestry project in Suffolk, a crucial and much-treasured asset for the UK’s environment-friendly farming. The aim is to secure Wakelyns – and its benefit for the public – for the future by bringing it into charitable community ownership and governance.

We need to raise up to £1.2 m to buy and run Wakelyns, including taking over Toby Wolfe’s 50% share, after which David Wolfe will make a gift of his 50% share. The entity which will own Wakelyns is a charity (in the form of a charitable community benefit society) called Wakelyns CCBS, which has recently been set up for this purpose of securing Wakelyns by a group of 14 founder members (with a view to a community share offering which will lead to wide ownership and membership).

Wakelyns’ 20 hectares (50 acres) of agroecological farmland provides a unique pioneering site from which scientists, land managers, policy makers and others are still learning and visioning an alternative, diverse farming system. Over the past 30 years Wakelyns has developed to become the home of the ground-breaking YQ population wheat and one of the most diverse long-standing demonstration/trial agroforestry sites in Western Europe.  

Wakelyns now also houses several rural business enterprises, around which it hosts courses, community and other events, and on-site accommodation for visitors and groups. All of this is designed to help put people in touch with environmental conservation and innovation, as well as the future of farming. In fact, most of the agroforestry sites in the UK (and many abroad) were preceded by and inspired by visits to Wakelyns.

Wakelyns key contribution is as a pioneering site where scientists, land managers, policy makers and others can learn and vision an alternative, diverse farming system for the UK.  

But that has been part of a privately-owned, though public facing, project which cannot continue in its present form. We want to see it secured for long term public benefit, rather than risk it needing to be sold and disappearing from public benefit.

Following wide consultation, 14 founder members have set up the Wakelyns CCBS – a charity in the form of a Community Benefit Society (Rules here). It is raising funds and recruiting members (through a community share offer) to secure community ownership, governance and management for the long-term.

Andy Dibben

Head grower Abbey Home Farm and author of "Silvo-horticulture - a grower's guide to integrating trees and crops"
"Wakelyns' pioneering early adoption of Agroforestry has been an invaluable source of inspiration and knowledge already to many people, both practitioners wishing to design agroforestry systems for their own holdings, but also for academics and policy makers. The ability to visit an established mature agroforestry system in the UK has never been as important as now and will remain crucial over years to come, interest in Agroforestry from farmers, NGOs, policy makers and academics continues to grow at a fast rate year on year. The living example Wakelyns offers these groups must be preserved so it can continue to inspire and educate all visitors far into the future."

Chris Packham - TV Naturalist and Presenter

Wakelyns is a magical oasis filled with life, life that’s prospers through a legacy of investment and protection. But it’s not all about the nature now, it’s about the future offering a tried and tested alternative to contemporary industrial agriculture. It’s a scientifically monitored test bed of ideas and proven practices which grow hope as well as trees and crops. It’s also a very rare resource , one that needs nurturing, imagination and love to reach its real potential. Please contribute whatever you can to preserve this vestige of pastoral paradise.