Room to Grow

Unless they're deliberately cultivated in an arboretum, most trees never get the chance to spread their limbs and assume their natural shape throughout their life - all too often they're confined to hedges and hacked about during hedge trimming or struggle to compete for light and space in a woodland. But this ancient wild cherry has been given room to grow. For some unknown reason it was planted (or maybe accidentally sown by a bird) in the centre of a field near Harperley in County Durham. Here it is in in magnificnet isolation, in the snow-covered landscape last winter........

........ and here it is today, photographed from exactly the same spot, covered in blossom and with a few sheep enjoying its shade on an unusually hot April day.