I was brought up not to like pine trees, regarding them as non-natives, too fast growing, invaders. This was particularly true of the post-war plantations of the Forestry Commission which were all over England and particularly in Wales. There was a sense that they were too regimented, too dark, too immune to changes in the seasons. But as Newborough Forest, which is a classic example of its type, first planted in 1947, has been gradually thinned, allowing a bit more light and variety, I find myself liking it more, as I did walking through it this morning:-
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
Yes, I suspect many of us have been of the same mind, but, as your photographs show, these plantings, at their best, contain a wide variety of trees and can be very beautiful. Consider Caspar David Friedrich.
Or have we now all been seduced by Messrs Cole and Sons best selling and now ubiquitous wallpaper?
There is also some rather fetching China from Clavering using the pine stem/trunk imagery. Then again it could be a continuation of the Nordic noir craze. ?
Are they pines? They seem to be larches; the leaves fall in autumn.
Dear Toshio, The dendrologists aren’t convinced they’re larches. Charles