'Bluebells, cockle shells, eevy ivy over...'

On Sundays after church, my Dad and I enjoyed going for walks in the countryside. One very memorable walk happened each year in the month of May. After two miles or so, we eventually came to a single-track road, which meandered down through a secluded part of the countryside into a valley, quite hidden from prying eyes.

About halfway down, just as we turned a bend in the road, there suddenly came into view a carpet of fragrant bluebells growing under a canopy of silver birch trees. As an eight-year-old, standing on that steep incline, looking up at those bluebells, I felt intoxicated, as if I had stepped straight into an illustration in one of my magical fairy books.
So strong was the impact of that memory, that, as an adult, I had no trouble persuading, first my husband, and then, our children, to go on little pilgrimages to see the floor of the wood covered in bluebells. Just as happened all those years before, the fragrance of the bluebells would greet us before we had actually caught a glimpse of the flowers.
No surprise, therefore, when given the opportunity of creating a garden here at Barleycorn, that I wanted to recapture that memory by paying homage to the bluebells, in a little bed entirely devoted to them. And keeping them company? Why, a canopy of silver birch trees, of course.

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went,
And cannot come again.

Housman