Looking at moss in a positive new light

and our ‘lawn’ is a mix of green from grass, moss and weeds.

We wonder why people work so hard to produce something so neat and contrary to nature – all those straight edges and alternating stripes, lacking any biodiversity and produced by applying weedkillers and fertilisers.

The Japanese are obsessed with moss at the moment but their enthusiasm might make us pause and admire this ancient plant which most of the time we ignore. So much of the wonder of the world is lost shade the moss seemed to cascade down stone hedgebanks with the fronds of hart’s tongue fern adding to the waterfall effect.

I began to notice the different kinds of moss (there are hundreds in this country alone) and their textures, their softness contrasting with the hardness of rocks. They are miniature forests teeming with tiny life forms.

Sometimes amateur painters pick up a tube of brown to paint tree trunks. Look! Perhaps there’s some grey but, at least in our wet climate tree trunks are predominantly green, mainly with moss, though as far as I can see it seems to be a myth that it just grows on the shadier side.

Moss was clothing the earth long before flowering plants. It has no roots to absorb water or food, just structures to hold it in place and a fascinating ancient method of reproduction that begins with spores rather than seeds.

People find this slow-growing plant calming and reverence its age and history.

With our nation in turmoil, perhaps a bit of Japanese-style contemplation of moss might provide some moments of tranquillity.