NATURE MOVES IN

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 66, Issue 250, 3 August 1946, Page 5

NATURE MOVES IN

POPPIES BLOOM IN LONDON’S RUINS LONDON, August 2. Poppies are blooming among the rubble of the ruins in Gutter Lane, near Newgate, in the heart of the City of London. They have joined the 120 varieties of wild flowers which bloom among London’s bombed out buildings. Within a few chains of Moorgate Street station, a 15ft high willow tree is growing on a bombed site in Milton Street and in many places among the of debris which lies between St. Paul’s and Old Street small shrubs and trees are sprouting among bracken and flowers. In a damaged building near Gos well Street, hard by the city’s busiest mercantile thoroughfares, a small tree is growing through a crack in the floor of an abandoned basement office. Within a few yards of Fleet Street bracken and flowers are growing among ruins of Gray’s Inn in the Temple. The shell of one of the city’s oldest churches, St. Swithin’s, is used every day as a picnic luncheon ground by the city’s workers, who eat their midday meal among the wild flowers and shrubs which have grown up inside the shattered walls.