From pond-listening to seed-planting, the author and illustrator of children's book A First Book of Nature take you through their favourite spring moments in this stunning gallery
Spring is great time to start looking at nature, as there’s something new to notice every day in even the teeniest garden or window box: new seeds sprouting, new leaves on the trees, new birds arriving from migration... Photograph: Nicola Davies/Mark Hearld/PRPhotograph: Nicola Davies/PRMy Devon garden had a pond outside the kitchen window, so I’d know when Winter was over when I’d hear the soft croaking of frogs on a February night. Photograph: Nicola Davies/Mark Hearld/PRPhotograph: Nicola Davies/PRI love the bits of wildness that find their way into cities, ‘round the back’, ‘on the edge’ and ‘in between’... Photograph: Nicola Davies/Mark Hearld/PRPhotograph: Nicola Davies/PRThe most ordinary wild plants, like willows and dandelions are the blessings of these snippets of feral wild. Photograph: Nicola Davies/Mark Hearld/PRPhotograph: Nicola Davies/PRI spent most Easters when I was little, in Radnorshire, feeding orphan lambs and then as a grown up kept sheep on my smallholding, mostly for the lamby tail factor! Mark added lapwings here too, I adore their zipping calls and dipping flight. Photograph: Nicola Davies/Mark Hearld/PRPhotograph: Nicola Davies/PRThe biggest thrill of my childhood was finding birds' nests. My grandpa was genius at it. My heart still turns over at the sight of a thrush's eggs, the colour of sky, or a clutch of tiny blue tit eggs fragile as snowflakes. Photograph: Nicola Davies/Mark Hearld/PRPhotograph: Nicola Davies/PRWhen I was seven, my parents’ garden had three flowering cherries that would cover the lawn in thick, pink snow that I never tired of running through and rolling in. The Japanese are so right to have a special festival for blossom! Photograph: Nicola Davies/Mark Hearld/PRPhotograph: Nicola Davies/PRSome of the happiest moments of my life have been planting seeds or pricking out seedlings. I started with my Dad, standing on an upturned bucket beside him in the greenhouse, planting tomatoes and coleus, and sweet williams and snapdragons. Photograph: Nicola Davies/Mark Hearld/PRPhotograph: Nicola Davies/PR
