Imagine a pair of swirling shells stretching for almost a kilometre across the south Cotswolds landscape. David Clensy meets the artist with big ideas about making his mark on our region

A couple of hundred million years ago, the Cotswolds was a very different place. Before the broad-leafed trees first flourished, before the hills were shaped, even before Jilly Cooper had moved into Bisley, this was an underwater land where ammonites floated around the tropical waters.

These simple creatures – like snails in appearance – led simple, uncomplicated lives.

In fact, this early "Cotswold set" may have been forgotten entirely had their dead shells not sunk to the bottom and, through a quirk of geology, ended up forming fossils on the sea bed.

Fast forward 200 million years, and the echo of the ammonites' lives has been there through the latter years of the 20th century. As gravel workers quarried the South Gloucestershire landscape near Cirencester, they regularly dragged up ammonite fossils.

Most were kicked aside without thought, and when the gravel and aggregate pits were finally given over to leisure pursuits, they were filled with water once again – forming scores of lakes to create the Cotswold Water Park.

But one ambitious artist has a plan to ensure the ammonites will never be forgotten. Mick Petts has been commissioned by the Cotswold Water Park Society to design a landform structure to divide the existing Cleveland Lake into two distinct areas – one for rowers and canoeists, the other for wildlife, especially wading birds.

His elaborate idea would see the formation of two enormous ammonite structures stretching for almost a kilometre across the lake.

Mick hopes the ambitious plan could be as distinctive a mark on our region's landscape as Anthony Gormley's Angel of the North has become in the North East.

"The landform would be made from the leftover aggregate that's still here from the gravel industry," Mick explains as we stroll around the edge of the lake, the peace broken only by the busy chirping of long- tailed tits.

"It would be a very sustainable way of producing a piece of landform art because there's an abundance of gravel still on the site from when it was a gravel pit. All we would have to do is to form it into the right shape."

The Abergavenny-based artist has had experience of "landform art" before – he created a 200m-long pit pony out of leftover coal spoil from nearby slag heaps.

"The pony became very popular with the locals, who named him Sultan after one famous pit pony they remembered from the days of the coal mining," says Mick.

"And if you think about it, this kind of landform art is nothing new – especially in the West Country. In Wiltshire, the landscape is dotted with all the ancient white horses, then you have the Cerne Abbas Giant down in Dorset.

"People normally ask whether we will be able to see the ammonites from the ground, and if not, then what's the point of creating them?

"But actually, I think you'll be able to work out what they are. The ancient people who built the white horses couldn't jump into a helicopter. They worked it out by walking the fields in the shape of a horse.

"I did the same thing with Sultan – it was years before I ever saw a photograph of him from above. But your brain is able to work out the shape of a landform simply by walking around it.

"With the ammonites, it might be a subtle experience at first. But as you walk further along the gravel barrier you'll quickly realise you're walking through the swirl of an ammonite shape.

"By the time you reach the middle of the swirl, you'll be left in no doubt, and as it twists to infinity at the middle, I'll embed an actual ammonite to complete the swirl."

The centre of the landform will also feature a specially-designed swirling bird hide where twitchers can squirrel themselves away to keep an eye on the wading birds that the extra shingle and gravel is expected to encourage into the lake.

"When I was approached by the Cotswold Water Park Society to come up with the proposal," explains Mick, "they explained the design would also need to incorporate a way of teaching visitors about the history of the site.

"My suggestion is that this could be incorporated in the form of a timeline, running the full 900-metre length of the landform, and explaining the story of the site through the millennia."

There's an obvious comparison with the giant Palm and World landform structures that have been built in Dubai, but Mick is quick to distance his work from those spectacular projects. "They're amazing," he says, "but they're not sustainably produced from materials that existed on the site.

"There's a world of difference with what we're hoping to do here. Our work would be all about renewables – the swirl is a metaphor for life forces in most cultures – for the continuity and regrowth of life.

"We're surrounded by swirls in the natural world, from the macro to the micro levels.

"The galaxy itself is one big pair of swirls, but then you can focus in on individual DNA strands, which are also set out in the familiar twin swirls of the double helix.

"So ammonites seemed like a powerful symbol to choose."

The project – which has yet to be costed – would be funded by the Aggregates Levy, which is a tax paid by gravel mining companies that has to be reintroduced to districts affected by the gravel industry.

The latest levy grant, of £250,000, has paid for the development of Mick's initial design as well as a new bat house, improvements to footpaths, car park renovations and a willow lantern pageant for local school children.

If the ammonite landform gets the go-ahead, it could start taking shape on the Cotswolds landscape within a couple of years. "It will be constructed by bulldozers which will be connected to a GPS-guided computer system," Mick explains.

"This means the bulldozer drivers on the ground will be able to follow my designs with extreme accuracy

"But it will still be a matter of keeping a close eye on the work as it progresses, because sometimes designs that look good on paper need a bit of adjustment to make them work when you see them out there in the real world. I'm very excited by the prospect of being able to get this under way – to be able to work on such an epic scale.

"I'm already on the seventh draft of the design, so I'm really itching to get going as soon as we get the approval of the local people and the financial backing from the Aggregates Levy."

To find out more about the project, visit the Cotswold Water Park website, www.waterpark.org