Growing towards the light
Discovering all the wonderful colours of nature....
Dear reader, how have you been? It’s been a while since I last wrote to you, and so much has happened, as always. Mayday came and went, and I realised, possibly several years too late, that the festival has been rebranded as Beltane. Did you celebrate Beltane? I like the fact that we are revisiting these ancient rituals and traditions, rooted in the cycle of nature and tied to a sense of place and belonging. I’m not sure Beltane is something which should be tied down to a particular date - it is a time of great greening, happening almost over night, when the hawthorns bloom. A brief period as we tip from the expectation of fecundity into a time of conception. The seeds are sown and growth is underway. Suddenly, after the unfurling of spring, it is all happening, and Beltane is the start of that, arriving at different times in different places. One valley tips into it before the next, the inland sun may shine with greater warmth than the seaside one. And so, as Beltane came and went, I was in Ruthin, delivering a Paper Blossom Masterclass, watching a group of twelve very talented paper artists bringing forth great beauty from piles of green and pink paper as they created their handmade branches of apple and cherry blossom. I won’t go into detail here but if you’d like to see more about that, head over to Instagram.
Since then, I’ve been up to my elbows in plant dye, experimenting with both red and orange madder, achieving interesting and unexpected results, cooking up buckets of red onion skin and coaxing out some wonderful green. The papers were for limited edition kits I’m taking over to Hebden Bridge with me - ooh, tomorrow! Have I mentioned I am going to be the guest artist at Hannah Nunn’s studio this Saturday? If you haven’t come across her work before, Hannah’s designs are a masterclass in simplicity, clean elegant lines capturing the essence of all my favourite plants and flowers. It’s fair to say we draw inspiration from the same source, as you can see we’re both very fond of hedgerows! Right now, we have a great collaborative giveaway happening - the draw is on Saturday (16/05). To take part, head over here.
Elsewhere, and I feel a sense of duty in sharing this with you, I went to see the People's Emergency Briefing. If you haven’t yet come across this, let me explain. In November, an audience of over a thousand politicians and leaders were invited to a briefing by ten leading experts on the implications of climate change, each one focussing on their area of expertise, including nature, health, food security, national security and weather. The National Emergency Briefing is calling on the Government to ensure the public is informed, prepared and protected by screening the film on TV:
The Government should deliver a prime-time, multi-channel televised national emergency briefing to the nation, launching a major public engagement plan to cut through disinformation. Our plain-speaking experts have shown how this can be done. There should then be regular televised updates.1
The film is currently being screened on a voluntary basis by groups up and down the country, visit the site to find a screening happening near you soon. I left the screening feeling disturbed but also curiously optimistic, a reaction reported by many who have seen the film. But this reaction relies on the fact we have just watched the experts outlining worst case scenarios and following up immediately with solutions - because yes, solutions, or paths through, positive reactions - they exist in all scenarios. There are many actions we can take which can mitigate the worst outcomes. In order for these actions to take place at the required level, the whole country needs to be given the full information and the opportunity to mobilise and create real change.
Something else I took away from the screening: there was debate about whether or not children should watch the film. The film is not recommended for under 16s. Some parents present very much agreed with the age limit and felt young people children should not watch it, but I can’t help thinking - our kids, they start learning about the climate crisis in primary school. We have to talk to children and young people about what we're facing, have these painful discussions and encourage positive decision-making. Ultimately the future outlined in this film is our children's. Although - let’s be real - we can’t pretend it is not also ours - it’s time to stop pretending that we aren’t already experiencing the negative effects of climate change. What do you think?
The film covered nine different areas and it is overwhelming to go through all of this at once - even though that is the reality. I don't know what the answer is, but I know that as individuals we can’t all tackle all of it. All of us will have to think about the way we live - but beyond that maybe each of us has to focus on the thing that we feel we can make a difference in. For me, it’s nature: encouraging other people to engage with nature, to reconnect and experience that sense of being part of the web of life. And encouraging crafters to ditch the plastic!
To end on a positive note I want to go back to the Tip Path. Last year, a number of trees bordering the path were felled to make way for a new hedge. These were trees had grown together overhead to form a wonderful green tunnel, the kind you walk through and feel the magic. And then suddenly, they weren’t there, and I must admit I was sad. But something beautiful has happened. The hedgerow plants, given better access to the sun, have shot upward with extraordinary vigour. Red campion, cow parsley, garlic mustard, blue alkanet, stitchwort, Herb Bennet and buttercups, are all growing tall, reaching toward the light. It’s one become a truly beautiful stretch of path. The hawthorn hedge is doing really well, putting on its annual spectacular, frothy white, slightly unruly, magnificent. So, despite the pain, change, it turns out, had unforeseen gifts.
That’s all for now. Try and get to see the Peoples Emergency Briefing. It really is not all doom and gloom. And it is essential viewing.
Thanks, as always, for being here and reading to the end. Until next time, with love, Ling
Last call to sign up for Form and Freedom
I’m sharing my techniques in a Creative Paper Flower Class next Wednesday 20th May - 10 - 4 - lunch and cake included! There are a few spaces left, come and join us - we’ll be looking at and making wildflowers. Find full details here.
Hannah & Ling’s Flowery Giveaway
To celebrate the month of flowers opening everywhere, Hannah Nunn and Ling Warlow are having a giveaway. Sign up here to enter the draw.
First prize is Hannah’s small buttercup lamp and one of Ling’s beautiful ‘Bookcase Botanical’ Buttercups!
Second prize is one of Hannah’s buttercup meadow posies and one of Ling’s £15 paper flower craft kits of your choice
PLEASE NOTE: If you enter you will be signed up to BOTH of our mailing lists. You are of course welcome to unsubscribe at any time but we hope you will stick around to receive our carefully crafted emails about our creative practices and the nature that inspires our work.
Sign up here to enter the draw. We will pick a winner when we are together in our open studio on Saturday 16th of May.
All images taken by and copyright Ling Warlow 2026
https://www.nebriefing.org/aims
Dear Ling,
Thank you for this beautiful piece of writing. And thank you for drawing attention to the National Emergency Briefing.
Even though we live far apart, here in Hungary we have been doing something very similar. For example, the nature filmmaker Balázs Szendőfi created films that not only showed the beauty of nature, but also began revealing its brutal destruction. The previous government would not allow these films to be broadcast — they were effectively banned from television channels.
So instead, he traveled from village to village and from town to town, screening them for small groups of people and speaking with them afterward.
As for me, I began leading what we called “forest layings.” I would take people into forest areas devastated by clear-cutting, and there we would lie down on the ground like fallen trees. Later, we would walk through beautiful living forests as well. It became a kind of collective grieving process.
And something remarkable happened: people slowly began waking up from the paralysis of climate shock. They realized they were not helpless puppets.
There have been many, many actions like this over the past few years. And in the most recent election this April, we succeeded in removing a government that had been destroying nature for more than twenty years. And it was not a small defeat — it was a massive one.
The very first action of the new Minister for Nature Protection was to announce an immediate logging moratorium for protected forests.
I say all this because what you are doing there truly matters — and it will have an impact. Yes, together we are moving toward the light.
I wish you strength and perseverance.
And I absolutely adore your beautiful paper flowers.