Cowslip is one of Europe’s common native plants that saw a big decline in the UK post-World War II due to habitat destruction from ploughing grassland. These days in Yorkshire I see it mainly on steep grassy banks lining A-roads toward the east and north of the county. It’s far more common in the south of the UK.

It took me a few years in our garden to discover a single cowslip in our coppice where it almost certainly was planted by a previous owner. I left it for a couple of years to tough it out but decided in autumn to hoik it up to a less competitive spot in our garden.

I’m glad I did. I was able to easily divide that one plant into three. A few months later each division has already grown to full size, happily flowering in different spots of our garden.

Using cowslip in design

I’m planning to encourage the spread of cowslip in two key areas:

1. Garden: as one of our key low-growing spring plants to form a light yellow wash through our main garden.

2. Wilder area: primarily filled with native wildflowers, here I’ll let it grow in among the grass of the mini-meadow and woodland edge.

In both areas it grows alongside primrose, Primula vulgaris, with which it can hybridise to form something that looks like a cross between the two, called Primula vulgaris x veris. Not to be confused with oxslip, Primula elatior, which looks similar but is a rarer species native to East Anglia.

Cowslip will grow happily in pots and windowboxes as long as they don’t dry out. In fact, they are perfect for this in part-shade spots where they will grow in the same pot for years and years.

Because cowslips are quite small, like primroses, they are great spring flowers when everything in the garden is low, adding a little bright pop of colour. They are tough plants as long as they don’t completely dry out for long periods of time - most of the UK is fine.

Able to tolerate a fair amount of shade, they’re well suited to growing in competitive wild plant communities as well as designed ones in gardens. Taller summer plants can grow over the top of them without affecting them - very useful!

Propagating cowslip

It’s super easy to grow more cowslip. Dig up and divide plants (not from the wild) by hand - as discussed above, they come apart into little pieces easily. I find their clumps, like primroses, are actually dense patches of closely growing separate plants. They will also self sow if you have a number of plants - they are not self-fertile and need partner plants, which is why our single cowslip hadn’t self sown by itself.

Is cowslip edible?

Yes similar to primrose.

Is cowslip good for wildlife?

Yes. Like all early guaranteed flowers, it serves an important role for the first emerging insects, especially bumblebees. Long tongued butterflies and moths will also seek it out.

It has a particularly important role for the duke of burgundy butterfly, Hamearis lucina, which depends on the plant for its larvae. According to Buglife, eggs of this rare and declining butterfly are laid exclusively on the underside of primrose and cowslip leaves. Growing a patch could potentially help them, especially if you live near the main strongholds in southern England, the Lake District and Yorkshire.

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I love daisies - I love them a lot. Filled with magic, romanticism and folklore, they can also be highly stylish. Easy to grow in all manner of locations, you can have a lot of fun with daisies!

Need to know info about Bellis perennis

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I have an absolute obsession at the moment with our native wildflower, Galium verum, commonly known as Lady’s Bedstraw. I’ve walked past it at the bottom of our garden and loved if for the last five years but this year I’m obsessed.

I suppose it started thinking about the moth caterpillars that feed on it, our 2 - 3 plants are supporting a lot of wildlife. I decided to propagate more plants from their seeds and rooted stolons to increase the population making it less fragile.

Then it dawned on me that it’s such a stylish plant. That floofy yellow is exactly the same yellow everyone is falling over themselves to grow in gardens at the moment from cultivated flowers such as giant fennel and verbascums. Yet here it is, a pale summer yellow right in front of us on one of the toughest grassland wildflowers.

Need to know information about Galium verum

Native to temperate Eurasia and northern Africa, Lady’s Bedstraw has one of the largest ranges of wildflowers we’ve been discussing on Wild Way. Demonstrating how broad its tolerance is of different growing conditions. Which makes it all the more bonkers to look to gravel or sand planting in the UK for similar plants before even considering the wildflowers under our noses. This is another brilliant climate change resilient plant in regular soils.

It flowers from mid-summer until late-summer, a good long period of time. Reaching about 60cm or so high by the same wide. In early summer it emerges in a mound of attractive fine leaves growing in whorls around the stems.

Lady’s bedstraw needs full sunlight and grows well in low grassland. If it becomes shaded by taller grasses or other plants it will dwindle. On our farm it is growing in semi-rough but low grassland among other wildflowers. I don’t tend to cut this area and the wildflowers grow strongest here.

The name bedstraw is thought to come from the plant’s use for stuffing mattresses back in the day. The flowers smell sweetly of honey in warm summer sun.

Using lady’s bedstraw in garden design

Lemon or primrose yellow flowers against vibrant green stems creates a fresh and contemporary look at a point in midsummer that needs it. Lady’s bedstraw grows in vertical to fountain shaped plumes of tiny flowers from June to September.

It partners well with all wildflowers, especially other late season flowers such as complementary white and yellow ox-eye daisy and contrasting purple knapweed, pink musk mallow or pale-blue devil’s-bit scabious. Including it in a mix of full-sun plants such as these or similar, they balance into a stable plant community (show in these photos).

On top of growing lady’s bedstraw in full or mini meadows, it works well in a regular planting scheme as you would other airy lemon yellow plants. I plan to introduce it to our main garden.

This sort of yellow works well as a modern seam of colour in a garden, such as a calm scheme with white flowers. Partnered with red or purple creates a likely and striking contrast. While alongside the blue of Devil’s-bit scabious or Field scabious makes for a softer palette. I really love it with the dark purple of knapweed, they set each other off.

You could have one clump but I always think this shade of yellow works best dotted around the garden or in repeated sweeps. Adding an electric acid yellow-green that enlivens everything else.

How to propagate lady’s bedstraw?

Galium verum produces stolons, above ground horizontal shoots that stretch away from the main plant and root next to it, forming a new plant. This is exactly the same as with strawberries.

Digging up these rooted plants in late summer or autumn (from a garden, not the wild, that is illegal) is the easiest way of propagating them. Alternatively, you can grow them from seed.

I’ve collected lots of seeds from one of our plants this year, the little round black seeds are less than half a millimetre in size. Sow these onto the surface of peat free compost in autumn or spring, water and wait for them to germinate.

Once you have some small plants, they can be planted wherever you want them and they should grow away strongly as long as they are in full sun.

Is lady’s bedstraw good for wildlife?

Lots of pollinators will feed on Galium verum for pollen and nectar - ours are always covered in meadow brown butterflies, small skippers and day flying moths. In addition, moth caterpillars feed on the leaves including bedstraw hawkmoth (Hyles gallii), elephant hawkmoth (Deilephila elpenor) and small elephant hawkmoth (Deilephila porcellus). Even one of my favourites, the hummingbird hawkmoth (Macroglossum stellatarum) caterpillars feed on it if they can survive the UK’s winters.

Is lady’s bedstraw edible?

Yes, the young stems and leaves can be eaten raw or cooked like spinach.

Stay tuned as I propagate our plants and introduce them to new areas around our farm in 2026.

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This common dumpy umbel is often overlooked - including by me - for the airy fairy carrot family but it’s beautiful in its own right and adored by pollinators. What I love is its long season of flowers, extreme drought and wet tolerance, and strong horizontal line.

Need to know about yarrow

Achillea millefolium evolved across the whole of the northern hemisphere except North America and Canada. Quite a remarkable range and speaks to yarrow’s excellent adaptability.

During drought in the UK, yarrow is one of the few plants that remains green when all grass in meadows has turned brown. And yet, on our heavy clay-loam soil during our super wet winters in West Yorkshire, it toughs it out too. This proves that while many gardeners are championing exotic plants to cope with climate change, we should really first be looking to tolerances in our existing wild plants. I believe there is room and a need for both, but to dismiss wild plants so readily is a mistake.

Yarrow needs full sun, it doesn’t tolerate shade. Shade from other plants will make it weak, causing it to disappear among larger plants. It will spread by seed and rhizomes, the underground stems that grow new roots and shoots about 20 - 30cm from the parent plant.

Is yarrow good for wildlife?

Yarrow, like all umbels, is loved by a wide range of insects including a vast array of species of beetle, fly, hoverfly, moth, butterfly, bee and wasp. Coupled with its long flowering season, it is a backbone of pollinator support.

Using Achillea millefolium in garden design

I use Achillea millefolium all the time in my garden designs, it’s one of those plants worth sticking into sunny plantings where it can grow unbothered without really interfering with anything else. combining well with meadow plants and traditional garden plants.

There are specific design benefits to yarrow worth discussing. First, I love its form, with soft olive green feathery leaves beautiful in spring as tufts of foliage. When it sends up its short vertical stems to about 40-60cm, the shape of the plant changes to be slightly taller than wide with tight buds of flower opening in dense horizontal flower heads.

Like Hylotelephium (formerly sedums) this creates a flat area in a planting when all of the umbels join to create a useful low horizontal area of flowers. This is great for a block of colour and creates contrast next to airy, fountain shaped or more vertical plants.

Importantly, their relatively low height creates space above the plant. Gaps in planting create interest as much as the plants themselves. If you plant tall plants and yarrow together, those spaces above them create windows to plants beyond to look through and around.

Wild Achillea millefolium naturally comes in white to a pale pink. Often with a mix of the two in the same colonies. There are many cultivated colours too in a wide variety of hues and shades such as orange, terracotta-red and yellow. I like them all but recommend not overlooking the white or pale pink species.

The wild species is an incredibly tough plant whereas the cultivated varieties I have always found to be far weaker, especially on heavy or wet soils. In drier areas or very free draining soil, the cultivars fair better.

Another thing to note with yarrow is that while it forms clumps, its mild creeping nature means it spreads between and through other plants without really impacting their growth. This makes the plant a good mixer and is why it’s such a successful grassland wildflower where it primarily grows.

From a design perspective, that gentle movement as the plant spreads is exciting and useful. It means yarrow self propagates around the garden for free and with no effort, reducing the likelihood it will die and disappear. It also creates surprising new combinations we may not have thought of.

Cut back spent flower stems at the base and more flowers will soon grow to extend the season.

How to propagate Achillea millefolium

While you can grow achillea from seed, I personally wouldn’t ever bother doing this because dividing them or digging up rooted rhizomes is ten times easier. Rootle around for a shoot outside of the main clump, dig it up with roots using a trowel and plant where you want it. Either direct in the ground or into a pot of compost to grow into a larger plant first. Oh, I should mention due to their drought tolerance and lack of need for nutrition, yarrow grows really well in pots.

Is yarrow edible?

Yes, the leaves and flowers are edible with a strong floral taste. I’m not overly keen but you can use them in salads or for teas. People use yarrow for herbal medicine but I can’t say I would ever use it in this way as the effects are not backed up by credible research.

Are there any downsides to yarrow?

None that I know of - the main downside I mentioned with the colourful cultivars, they are far weaker than the straight species.

Give Achillea millefolium a go for guaranteed flower power all summer as part of my surefire butterfly and moth wildflower mix.

Happy growing!

When we first moved to our garden in West Yorkshire back in 2021 I spotted the familiar pink flower of what I initially thought was Herb Robert, then quickly realised its leaves were completely different. Glossy with a reflective sheen and rounded, the segments cut just beyond halfway. Those shiny leaves are where Shining Cranesbill, Geranium lucidum, gets its name and is the distinguishing feature between it and round-leaved cranesbill.

• Max size: 40cm high, 40cm wide

• Origin: Europe to India, northern Africa, Madeira

• Life: annual or biennial

Geranium lucidum is not edible like some other wild geraniums. Though like the others, it is used by all manner of insects from moths and butterflies, to hoverflies and beetles.

Around our house Geranium lucidum grows out of the loam-clay soil directly as well as from cracks in the mossy drystone walls. It seems perfectly happy in either conditio…

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I hadn’t noticed round-leaved cranesbill until this autumn when a single plant appeared next to the gate of our chicken area. At first it looked like Herb Robert or Shining Cranesbill and I was about to walk past when something fired in my head that its leaves looked different to both.

Less divided than Herb Robert, lighter than shining cranesbill with a softer matt finish. So perfect did this plant look at first I wondered if it was a garden escape cultivar, an alpine geranium perhaps. But no, it is one of our wild geranium species, Geranium rotundifolium.

• Max size: 40cm high, 40cm wide

• Origin: Europe to Himalayas, northern Africa, Macaronesia islands

• Life: annual

I love that about wildflowers, even when you think you’ve seen them all something totally new appears on your very doorstep. Growing wildflowers is all about keeping our eyes open.

Round-leaved cranesbill can have much…

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One of my top wildflowers from my book Wild about Weeds is Herb Robert, Geranium robertianum. I love its lacy leaves dotted with the tiny stars of pink flowers, both lasting pretty much all year. Fantastic in dry shade where it proliferates adding colour where so few other plants can. If Herb Robert weren’t classified as a weed I’m convinced people would pay good money for this plant down the garden centre.

• Max size: 40cm high, 40cm wide

• Origin: temperate northern hemisphere, North Africa

• Life: annual, biennial, occasional short-lived perennial

Our garden is distinctly lacking in Herb Robert, so I took one of the few plants we do have from the driveway and planted it at the top of a deeply shaded sloping area a couple of years ago. It’s a tricky full shade belt beneath deciduous trees between our garden and meadow.

In this area I only want to grow wildflowers as a preventative meas…

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Ragged robin is one of my favourite perennial plants. Flowering from May to August with delicate, finely divided petals in a strong pink held on tall thin stems above narrow smooth and lush leaves. That ragged appearance to me is as contemporary a style icon as flowers come.

I’ve rarely seen this wildflower in the wild but when I have, it’s been magical. Ragged robin originates from all across Europe to Siberia, plus all surrounding islands as well as Iceland. Which is interesting from a distribution point of view. In the UK - where our natural habitats are among the most decimated in the world - ragged robin is declining due to the draining of wet meadows, its natural habitat. Ragged Robin, Silene flos-cuculi is in the same plant family as pink campion, Silene dioica.

In our big meadow, we had one ragged robin plant when we moved in, which has multiplied to a grand total of three plants over the five years since. Slowed down by the wild roe deer nibbling the flowers off before they co…

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My problem is that I have so many top-favourite plants that my top plants list must be hundreds long! Yet Devil’s-bit scabious is definitely up there at the top of my ginormous list. A wildflower every bit as good as any other ornamental plant, and better than most.

I fell in love with devil’s-bit scabious walking the wilds of the East Yorkshire coast where it grows among heather, ragwort, golden rod and ox-eye daisy. It’s one of those perfect plants that looks great in leaf, forming a lovely rosette in spring, and has tall airy stems lifting those blue-lilac flowers up high in late-summer for a large number of pollinators including at least one threatened insect.

Need to know information about Succisa pratensis

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Scrambling and scribbly, Vicia cracca known as tufted vetch, is one of my top future plants for gardens. I first noticed it climbing up rusty metal fences in waste grounds of south London, then I spotted it growing among ox-eye daisies and grasses of meadows.

Pops of purple, pink and blue from its space-age vertical one-sided racemes of flower lend an almost ultraviolet colour, a colour I treasure in gardens.

Beautiful ladder leaves on stems as though I’ve scrawled on a piece of paper. Its mess shouldn’t work and yet it does. Creating a wonderful mound of non-stop colour all summer.

Need to know information about Vicia cracca

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When wild viburnums look this good, why have we been bothering with cultivated ones?

Viburnum opulus first came onto my radar one winter during my walks along the Surrey Hills. In the dull grey, red berries of the guelder rose shone out.

Here on our farm in Yorkshire, we’re lucky to have one at the bottom of the garden as well as a few dotted among our mixed hedges.

It’s a shrub of short moments through the seasons. From the winter stems, emerging spring leaves, early-summer flowers, autumn colours and translucent red berries. None last particularly long but each is as beautiful as the next.

Need to know information about Viburnum opulus

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Broom gets its name from the old use of its tough stems with wiry ends. Cut, dried and upturned, with lots of stems tied together, broom was once used to sweep floors. Who knows why we all stopped using it.

A wild shrub in the pea family, Fabaceae, it will be familiar to walkers of rugged places, growing in the most inhospitable spots. Not so inhospitable for broom, with its upright sprays of stems and tiny, almost imperceptible moisture conserving leaves. It loves the places many other plants don’t.

In spring it transforms from inconspicuous to glowing star with a galaxy of brightest of bright yellow flowers. Large and numerous.

I’ve planted various brooms around our garden, a main thread. The wild species, even more than the cultivated varieties, is one of my favourite shrubs.

Need to know information about Cytisus scoparius

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When the first wave of dandelion flowers hits in spring, they are the most wondrous blaze of gold. Looking at our garden, with all of the emerging perennials and allium shoots, it is the humble dandelion that is suddenly doing the heavy lifting. Weaving around all of the other plants in a beautiful forking river of warm yellow. If I’d have weeded, I would have been denied this natural superbloom.

Then, after a time...

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I’ve really got to know cuckoo flower since living in Yorkshire. They grow in the surrounding grasslands, popping up here and there from spring through to summer, flowering in beautiful shades of white to very pale pink. Their flowers glow in thick grass, held just high enough in the sward to be seen.

It’s the delicacy of the flowers, while having good presence from a distance and up close, as well as its reliability that makes cuckoo flower one of my top wild way plants. Over the last two years I’ve been propagating more of them from two plants I found growing on our farm, I discuss how to do this below.

It’s said that Cardamine pratensis begins flowering at the time you can hear cuckoos, giving its common name, and sure enough, that seems to be true for us. Though with cuckoos declining and on the endangered list in the UK, it may not be the case in future.

Need to know information about cuckoo …

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Narcissus pseudonarcissus is - in my opinion - one of the coolest names in botany, belonging to one of the coolest plants, the wild daffodil. Nearly all daffodils we know are hybrid cultivars but one of my favourites is the very daff that was here all along.

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It’s well documented in my book Wild about Weeds how much I love foxgloves. They’re classic and timeless, yet contemporary with a slim vertical inflorescence of bell shaped flowers. They mark the early summer months across the UK and the rest of Europe when they can be found growing at the foot of walls, woodland edges and pathways. Loved by bumblebees that buzz their way upward from flower to flower, they are an essential plant in garden design for their upright shape and ability to self sow gently in gaps that need filling.

Need to know information about Digitalis purpurea

Digitalis purpurea originates from the very western side of Europe, plus up to Sweden and down to the very top of north Morocco. It’s since been introduced around the world by people, likely largely by gardeners for ornamental use. As an aside, it’s interesting to me that most plants that evolved in Europe did so along the coast of Northern Africa too, evidence primarily of historic land connections and secondly of natural seed transportation by birds and sea.

Foxgloves are biennials; they grow leaf rosettes in the first year, flowering in the second. Occasionally they can flower again for a third or fourth year, making them a short lived perennial but are unlikely to survive longer than this.

Naturally they flower in a mix of pink shades, plus the common but less prolific white form called Digitalis purpurea f. albiflora. In botanical language, the term form is used to categorise a plant as the same species but with a minor difference that’s not enough to separate it as a sub or separate species. Colour is visually very different to us, but otherwise, a white wild foxglove is no different to a pink one. You can often tell the colour when they are a seedling by the colour of the leaf stem, which takes on a pink hue for the pink flowered plants. White foxgloves have noticeably pale seedling leaves.

Many flowers have white forms where they lack colour pigment. Gardeners have managed over the years to raise more stable strains of foxglove seed that can help you choose between the two colours, alongside a vast range of different coloured cultivars and hybrids. Around the world there are many different species of foxgloves, Digitalis lutea and Digitalis ferruginea are grown in temperate gardens.

Foxgloves can grow in full sun to almost full shade. I find they tend to prefer in-between part-shade where they get some direct sun for a few hours, then time off in shade from a wall, shrub or nearby tree. This makes them very useful for growing in borders where they can grow among dense shade creating plants. However, buyer beware! Foxgloves are terrible at establishing naturally in high competition, which I’ll discuss below.

You can grow Digitalis purpurea in any soil as long as it isn’t completely dry in summer.

Is Digitalis purpurea edible?

NO! Digitalis purpurea is poisonous if eaten, small amounts will give you an upset stomach, large amounts potentially could kill someone. Be reassured, foxgloves grow around the world in their millions each year and I have never heard of foxglove poisoning! Don’t eat them.

I know parents can feel worried about foxgloves but we grew up with them in our old cottage garden in the Chiltern Hills, growing in the borders and along chalky country lanes. Our parents just told us they were poisonous and we shouldn’t touch them, so we didn’t.

How to grow foxgloves from seed

As a biennial with usually one, or sometimes two or three stems from the same growing point, you can’t divide foxgloves, they must be grown from seed. Luckily this is incredibly easy!

You can scatter seeds where you want them to grow in autumn or spring, but make sure they go into bare soil. Foxgloves don’t like competition at the germination or young stage and despite producing vast quantities of seeds in their thousands, there’s a reason why the entire country isn’t all foxgloves. They struggle to germinate in competition, which is why they grow along wall edges, on the edge of tree shade etc. (Please refer to the Plant vigour lesson for more on this topic).

We have Digitalis purpurea growing along the walls of our meadow but they don’t stand a chance within the crowded meadow itself, which is why they never venture in. But one year, when I scraped off lawn in our garden to create a new planting area, the entire patch of bare soil naturally became the foxglove patch from historic seeds, shown in one of the pictures earlier.

For guaranteed success, sow the fine dust sized seeds onto the surface of peat free compost, watering from below by sitting the tray or pot in a little water. Within a few weeks they will germinate in large numbers - they don’t like competition but they do like growing when they have space to themselves!

Once they have 4-6 leaves, gently tease the foxgloves out of the compost with a stick or fork, being careful not to damage their roots, then plant into a larger pot. Plant into the ground when they are about 10-15cm or more in width, when they are large enough to compete with other plants.

Collecting foxglove seeds is easy and fun. Keep an eye out for a plant you like in summer and note where it is. Revisit regularly toward the end of flowering and look for the dried brown seed pods where flowers used to be, they tend to ripen while the rest are still flowering.

When pods open, seeds easily pour out and you can tip a few into an envelope or my recyclable seed packets. Sow right away or in spring.

Using foxgloves in garden design

I love, love, love foxgloves for garden design and I hope I can do them justice by explaining why.

Firstly I guess, they are easy to grow and reliable, these wildflowers do what you expect them to do. Little wildlife eats them and they don’t attract any fungi or bacteria. Occasionally the stem may be nibbled killing growth above, but rather than a problem, this causes the foxglove to grow multiple flower stems instead, seemingly going into overdrive to compensate! It’s worth cutting one stem off at the top to see this happen yourself.

Secondly, as you can see in our garden above, the vertical shape adds a visual element that is a satisfying contrast to lower or more fluffy plants, like the Deschampsia grass and ox-eye daisies. They are particularly tall and narrow, while still being impactful from a distance as well as up close.

Thirdly, their colour is easy to combine with most plants. From the purple-pink to the clean white. The white form to my eye lends itself to elegant, contemporary planting. While the pink is warm and inviting. I love either, though there is nothing better than a white foxglove glowing in deep shade where it brings lightness and an ethereal quality.

This is all incredibly useful for design because it gives you easy impact to transform a space in sun or shade. By letting Digitalis purpurea grow through a garden, as you can see in the photo, they give you structure, bouncing your eye across even chaotic wild planting. Planted on mass, the patterns of line and flower they create can be spectacular.

Once Digitalis purpurea is established in your garden and self sowing, it is easy in spring to move seedlings around to better spots. Giving you free flowers with oomph to fill gaps.

It’s the very narrow vertical shape of foxgloves that makes them look contemporary to me, working well with a modern palette of plants and an ongoing star of future gardens.

Indestructible yet always beautiful, Silene dioica, pink campion, is one of our star wildflowers.

Growing in various spots of our wilder garden below the polytunnel and a spot within the chicken area. These patches are all within competitive rough grass and nettles, and the majority grow in shade. Our wild roe deer family, who we share the farm with, munch on them regularly.

And yet, the red campion keep growing and keep flowering from spring right the way through to winter. Slowly spreading into low evergreen mats in cold months until flowers emerge again with warm weather in spring.

Need to know information about Silene dioica

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Wind twisted, gnarling and angular. Weather cragged bark, vicious thorns of dagger. Frozen in motion. Overlooked contemporary tree of our time. Loved by moths and butterflies, birds and mammals. Hawthorn captures the wild way like no other plant.

Need to know information about Crataegus monogyna

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For silhouette and winter structure, there are few plants with better architectural shape than our wild teasel, Dipsacus fullonum. Without fail, everywhere I’ve seen teasels grow, from gardens to the wild, I’ve fallen more and more in love with them. Combined with their ease of growth and wildlife supporting qualities, teasel is right up there as one of my top plants to grow.

Need to know information about Dipsacus fullonum

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Somewhat unfairly, I’ve had a love hate relationship with holly over the years. I’ve always loved seeing the red berries and their association with this time of year as we approach the winter solstice on the 21 December. And I love the shape of each individual leaf. But I’ve never really liked the look of the overall tree, with its dark shiny, curled and spiky leaves.

The shape of the stems and branches, the way they fire out all over the place, can look rangy and odd, while those spiky leaves are a literal pain in the bum, or more often, hands. Those shiny-muted green leaves remind me of dull, smelly, uncomfortable Barbour jackets and Landrovers, a feeling I associate with cold mud and an out-of-touch elite of people who hunt foxes and pheasants for fun (don’t worry if you own a Barbour jacket or Landrover, I’m not tarring everyone wit…

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