But what you often won’t find is the lovely variety of wildflowers that 30 to 40 years ago decorated these same roadside verges: comfrey, lady’s smock, white dead-nettle, garlic mustard, bird’s-foot trefoil, ox-eye daisy, early purple orchid and many more.

In an earlier posting I have mentioned the flourishing bee orchids that occur naturally in the lawns here, but more exciting still has been the appearance of a single flowering early purple orchid in a spot in which I scattered seed roughly four years ago.