Chelsea flower show garden to champion Britain’s endangered rainforests

Atlantic oak woodland at Piles Copse, Dartmoor, Devon. Vast expanses of the UK, particularly in the west of England, were once covered in temperate rainforest. Photograph: Lloyd Russell/University of Plymouth/PA

Mosses and cow parsley will feature in a Chelsea flower show garden to celebrate endangered British rainforests.

Vast expanses of the UK were once temperate rainforest. But these moss-covered ancient trees and their lichen have become a rare sight due to deforestation and overgrazing. Dartmoor, for example, once covered with trees, now harbours just a few fragments of temperate rainforest.