Spring in London has finally sprung. The lid of concrete grey cloud has occasional cracks in it allowing the sun to shine through which completely transforms the appearance of the place.  

The seasonal ’showers’ this year have had a monsoon-like intensity but having suffered the discomfort of long days of rain, Londoners have been rewarded by some wonderfully dramatic sunsets as Toby Melville demonstrates

The rain has transformed London’s parks into an explosion of lush new foliage and sprawling suburbs are transformed by cherry blossom. 

However as Alessia Pierdomenico shows, for those without access to parks and gardens all is not lost, because when the sun sets the Guerilla Gardeners emerge. Working under cover of darkness, armed with seed bombs, chemical weapons and pitchforks they transform urban wasteland. “Their tactics are anarchistic, their attitude revolutionary. Their aim: to beautify.”

And London can be a very beautiful city indeed.

I live close to Richmond Park in South West London, where at dusk a few days ago the sun setting beyond the vast expanse of Heathrow Airport, shone diffused through a rain shower, turning new leaves transluscent and with the herd of deer grazing in the foreground looked just like a scene from Ridley Scott’s Legend.

Unfortunately it was one of those ‘better remembered than photographed’ moments.