Dr Jeremy Dagley is head of conservation at Epping Forest

I’VE come to Big View for what its name promises: a scenic outlook across the Lea Valley into Hertfordshire. But despite the panorama, I quickly become absorbed by what’s at my feet.

Big View is within the ancient Honey Lane Quarters, once grazed on by the livestock of the monks of Waltham Abbey.

On its steep slopes of gravelly clay, a heathy grassland has been slowly recolonising, following restoration some 30 years ago.

This once widespread Forest habitat is now rare and a conservation priority for re-establishing cattle grazing.

One plant to benefit has been Heather, the emblematic flower of the Forest.

On the parched upper slopes it grows prostrate, recolonising steep, thin-soiled ground grazed down by Fallow Deer.

Where I’m walking across the slope, conditions change quickly providing opportunities for scarce plants.

Seepage lines persist throughout the year, where gravel meets clay, and here I record bright green, sedge-filled flushes.

Around these, in soil still moist despite the drought, there are natural garlands of pale primroses and yellow pimpernel.

Inbetween the parched and the flushed, tormentil flowers brightly stud the grassland and patches of crinkled wood-sage mark out where the soil is leached and acidic.

And then to my delight, I stumble across a plant that I thought extinct. Sprinkled through emerging bracken and bramble, the tiny lilac-blue sprays of heath milkwort flowers are twinkling back at me. Almost lost from Essex altogether, this discovery represents another stitch back in the Forest’s natural fabric and reward for years of restoration work.