Alders and Imagination

Old trees with character feed the imagination. The alders in the Strawberry Lee Plantation are as close as we get here to those in old fairy tale books usually illustrated by Arthur Rackham.

What a pity children today rarely get the chance to explore the natural world on their own. Rackham's illustrations related vividly with the mind of a child who had experienced a lonely walk through the woods. Learning to manage fears and to smile at surprising effects was part of relating to a world outside oneself, much more rich an experience than coping with someone else's overblown fantasies as in the second hand imagery of computerised games. Rackham's pictures took you back to the world you knew and could touch enabling you to invent other characters similarly rooted in direct observation.