Sit back and re-flax

EACH May and June on a farm at the edge of the Cotswold town of Stroud, there appears a small sea of clear, pale blue, the colour of an English summer sky. It is flax, its delicate flowers blooming on tall, slender stems amid the green and gold of neighbouring arable crops.

This half-acre patch is grown by Simon Cooper and the crop is processed in a small workshop on the banks of the River Frome at the bottom of his garden. Together with a tiny group of fellow enthusiasts, Mr Cooper is tending the first green shoots of a flax revival.

‘For centuries, many thousands of British acres were covered in blankets of blue’

The Latin name for flax is —most useful—and, every summer for centuries, many thousands of British acres were covered