Welcome to the 2026 edition of the award-winning Fern podcast as the season turns.

Released on the first of each month, the episodes follow the changing landscape of the seasons,

from the moon and the stars to the tides and the trees.

I'm Leah Lain-Durts, author of The Almanac, a seasonal guide, and this podcast is a collaboration

between myself and Fern, makers of small batch seasonal perfume. We're now truly into spring,

just past the equinox and revelling in the growing season.

Those of us on the Fern ledger are also revelling in their new fragrance,

a green and white floral scent, wild, tangled and evocative of a very special place.

For spring 26, Fern has partnered with NEP Wilding, a pioneering rewilding project

in Sussex, where the land has now been returned to nature for a quarter of a century. Creatures that are

rare or even extinct elsewhere in England have become common at NAP, including nightingales, turtle doves, white storks, and beavers,

the charismatic stars of Fern's offbeat nature film, narrated by Claire Foy and written by Max Porter.

You can watch it on social media or on the Fern Cinema, www. Furn.com forward slash cinema.

Throughout this episode, you'll hear sounds recorded amid neps entrancing biodiversity last spring,

interwoven with our ode to the chalk stream, an extremely rare habitat that is much in need of

protection. Our April chalk stream is sunlit and clear, a river in a fairy tale. We spot amphibians

and salmon in its crystalline waters, pick wild watercress and stand rapt on the bank, to listen to

Britain's most virtuoso

songbird. This month's music is a new version of the rousing old song when spring comes in.

And we hear tell of the ancient salmon of Hlin-Hlieu, the oldest animal in Britain.

We hope that this brief guide to the month ahead will awaken you to the rhythms of the year

and help you to settle deeper into the seasons.

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