A hauntingly beautiful artifact of British acid folk, recorded by three young musicians in a single day. Nothing else in the Harvest catalog sounds like it. Essential for anyone who thinks Fairport Convention and Vashti Bunyan defined the genre's outer edges.
Some albums feel like they were pressed from the same soil they sing about. The Garden of Jane Delawney doesn’t just reference the English countryside — it sounds as if the tape machine was set up in a damp churchyard at dawn, and the microphones caught the wind moving through the reeds.
Forest made exactly one album. They were three musicians from Scarborough, barely out of their teens. Martin Welham played guitar and sang, his sister June handled vocals, dulcimer, and a wheezing harmonium that gives the whole record its damp, cellar-chapel warmth. A friend, Des Glover, played bass and added harmonies. No session players. No overdub pile-ups. Just three people in a room.
The album was recorded at Sound Techniques in London, with John Wood at the controls. Wood had already engineered Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left and would go on to work with Fairport Convention, Pentangle, and the Incredible String Band. He had a gift for acoustic instruments — the “untreated” quality of his sessions was deliberate. He once said he liked the sound of the room as much as the musicians. You can hear it here.
The opening track, “A Glade Somewhere,” starts with June’s voice alone, then a guitar creeps in like someone testing the ground. The harmonium arrives two minutes later, and suddenly you’re in a place that doesn’t appear on any map. The whole record is like that. Songs about fairies, rivers, and dead girls are delivered with such plain sincerity that cynicism becomes irrelevant.
The title track — a nine-minute centerpiece — is the album’s real achievement. It drifts through verses about a woman tending a garden, her death, and the garden’s decay. The melody never quite resolves, the rhythms shift like weather, and at one point someone starts whistling. It’s the kind of song that makes you wonder if England’s green and pleasant land ever really existed, or if we just dreamed it together.
Harvest Records released it in 1970. The label was home to Deep Purple and Pink Floyd, but someone in the A&R department had an ear for the strange. Pressing was small, sales were tiny, and Forest vanished. The album became a cult item, reissued on CD in the 1990s and again on vinyl in the 2010s. It still sounds like a transmission from another century.
This is not background music. It’s too fragile, too intimate for that. You put it on late at night, lights low, maybe a single lamp. You don’t skip tracks. You let the record run out and sit in the silence afterwards.
🎵 Key Takeaways
- Recorded at Sound Techniques with John Wood engineering.
- Three musicians from Scarborough, no session players or overdubs.
- Opening track starts with June's voice alone, then guitar creeps in.
- Title track nine minutes, melody never resolves, includes whistling.
- Harmonium provides damp, cellar-chapel warmth throughout.
- John Wood engineered Nick Drake's Five Leaves Left.
Why is Forest's only album so sought after by collectors?
It was issued on Harvest in 1970 with a tiny pressing — likely under 500 copies — and the label never promoted it. The combination of fragile acid-folk music, the pastoral album cover, and the sheer scarcity made it a holy grail for psych-folk collectors from the 1980s onward.
What instruments are used on The Garden of Jane Delawney?
Primarily acoustic guitar, dulcimer, harmonium, and voices. June Welham's harmonium gives the record its distinctive church-porch drone. Des Glover adds a subtle bass guitar on a few tracks but the album is almost entirely acoustic.
Is Forest related to the 1990s ambient group of the same name?
No. The 1970s Forest is this trio from Yorkshire. There is a later electronic project called Forest (and a rapper) but they share no members or musical connection.