I am soon to move from a London flat to a house with a garden in
Surrey (my first garden – I'm so excited!). There's a patch of lawn
with borders on one side of the house, and a woodland area on the
other side. The woodland area is about 20 yards by 20, and has about
half a dozen well established (i.e. big!) trees in it (a mixture of
evergreen and deciduous as far as I can remember); and then there is a
fair amount of smaller stuff underneath. As you can imagine, it's
pretty shady. Most of the big trees have preservation orders on them
so I can't do anything with them (not that I'd want to anyway). The
woodland area slopes downhill fairly steeply from south to north. I
don't intend to do anything with this area for the first year – just
watch it and see what's in there – but I'd be interested in hearing
people's views on what I could do to "develop" this patch a bit. What
kind of plants could I encourage (or introduce) that would thrive in
this environment? Any advice gratefully received – I suspect I'm
going to be asking for lots of it in the coming months!

Thanks

John