The English Garden

Let There BE LIGHT

Spring is the season for magic carpets, when small and insignificant flowers emerge from the earth and knit themselves into breathtaking sheets of colour. It is always a thrilling sight to come across a woodland floor that has been transformed in this way, but it happens only where deciduous trees shed their leaves, allowing light to penetrate to the ground in winter, before gently unfurling a green canopy of foliage to keep their small companions beneath sheltered from the drying heat of the summer months.

Some woodlanders are fussier than others about the specific combination of light and shade they require, but get that combination right and wonderful things can occur. And that’s

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