After the last Ice Age, most of Wales was covered by forests – not an unbroken blanket of trees, but a complex, varied landscape with lakes, fens and open mountain summits. Over millennia, people have cleared Wales's forest for other land uses, creating a mostly open landscape, with little native forest cover. The Forest of Dreams is striving to create a unique reserve to let flourish the woodland and the other rare habitats that can be found there.

 There are areas of step mountain that have been left wild for over 15 years. Trees are evident everywhere. Thousands. Knee deep heathers provide other habitat. Stands of birch expand, rowan spread in delicate lace like patterns perhaps not seen anywhere else in Britain, because of the rarity of totally natural regeneration. This is a unique project. In places the sheep paths are gone and an impenetrable forest has taken over. Only the truly wild can go there!

On lower ground, ash, oak, willow, hazel, hawthorn, alder are spreading over the carpet of wild flowers each spring. A carpet that simply did not exist a few years ago.  It does not take nature long. A total absence of wildflower is replaced by the beginnings of the native carpet of primrose, celandine, violets and others. 

All that needs to happen in Welsh and British landscape is to remove the sheep that create a virtual desert without any diversity.

We are getting new photos up here soon to illustrate the dramatic return of the wild. All lovers of the original face of the land can be pleased and take some inspiration!