If you go down to the woods today, you’re in for a big… treat. Britain’s ancient forests are magical realms, carpeted with nodding bluebells and gleaming galaxies of anemones and celandines in spring, festooned with butterflies and dragonflies in summer, studded with mushrooms and toadstools in autumn.
It wasn’t ever thus. Our neolithic farming ancestors began clearing Britain’s forests some 5,000 years ago, a process accelerated after the arrival of the Normans. A century ago, woodland covered just 5 per cent of the UK’s land. Thankfully, ongoing conservation efforts are reversing the tide, and woodland areas have more than doubled in the past hundred years.
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