SPRING IN THE GARDEN OF ENGLAND
Countryfile in Kent
Watch Charlotte Smith and Matt Baker in Kent’s High Weald, 6 March; available on iPlayer
It is spring at Brogdale Farm, near the old market town of Faversham in north-east Kent. Amid the orchards of the National Fruit Collection, sunlight filters through fresh green leaves and the ethereal pink and white petals of cherry blossom, dappling the ground below.
Picnic blankets are spread around the trees, with groups of visitors enjoying hanami – ‘flower viewing’– the Japanese custom of appreciating the transient beauty of the blossoms. My skin tingles as the lightest of breezes transforms the orchard into a snow globe of petals. The surrounding meadows are a pointillist landscape of buttercups, daisies and white clover, buzzing with honeybees awakened from their winter slumbers in Brogdale’s hives and busily playing their crucial part in the spring revival.
Blossoming fruit trees have been a feature of the Kent landscape in
