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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/23/country-diary-oaks-rhododendrons-wales-bodnant-gardens
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| Version 1 | Version 2 |
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| Country diary: a Welsh garden at its psychedelic best | Country diary: a Welsh garden at its psychedelic best |
| (6 months later) | |
| These oak leaves open like bloody beef. Not the “rich brown-umber hue the oaks unfold/ When Spring’s young sunshine bathes their trunks in gold” that John Clare described in his poem Wood Pictures in Spring. These are the emerging leaves of a Quercus robur “Atropurpurea” (they will mature to a deep red-purple), a form of English or common oak, growing in a Welsh wood on the ravine of a stream flowing into the Vale of Conwy. | These oak leaves open like bloody beef. Not the “rich brown-umber hue the oaks unfold/ When Spring’s young sunshine bathes their trunks in gold” that John Clare described in his poem Wood Pictures in Spring. These are the emerging leaves of a Quercus robur “Atropurpurea” (they will mature to a deep red-purple), a form of English or common oak, growing in a Welsh wood on the ravine of a stream flowing into the Vale of Conwy. |
| Bodnant’s gardens are at their psychedelic best, with rhododendrons and azaleas flashing white, pink, red, orange and blue in the Atlantic oak forest of Wales as it wakes from a long winter dream. They may have originated on hillsides from the Himalayas to Hokkaido and arrived in Britain from the “red tinged east … carried down gangplanks/ in dockers’ arms, Innocent/ and rare”, as Kathleen Jamie says in her poem Rhododendrons, but over many generations they have become commonplace, “native as language or living memory”. | Bodnant’s gardens are at their psychedelic best, with rhododendrons and azaleas flashing white, pink, red, orange and blue in the Atlantic oak forest of Wales as it wakes from a long winter dream. They may have originated on hillsides from the Himalayas to Hokkaido and arrived in Britain from the “red tinged east … carried down gangplanks/ in dockers’ arms, Innocent/ and rare”, as Kathleen Jamie says in her poem Rhododendrons, but over many generations they have become commonplace, “native as language or living memory”. |
| Cultivation has nurtured the living memory of these woods for centuries; its colours and forms are those of civilisation, but there is a presence here far more ancient than gardens or even woods. Around the striking red leaves of the oak are hoary tufts of green-grey stuff and little aluminium-coloured branchy things. These are Evernia and Usnea lichens, beings evolved from the symbiotic relationships between fungi and algae that deserve to be thought of differently from the plants on which they grow. They are part of a forest within a forest, a Celtic rainforest of lichens, mosses and liverworts that have a parallel existence outside that of cultivation and civilisation, with a language and living memory aeons older than flowers. | Cultivation has nurtured the living memory of these woods for centuries; its colours and forms are those of civilisation, but there is a presence here far more ancient than gardens or even woods. Around the striking red leaves of the oak are hoary tufts of green-grey stuff and little aluminium-coloured branchy things. These are Evernia and Usnea lichens, beings evolved from the symbiotic relationships between fungi and algae that deserve to be thought of differently from the plants on which they grow. They are part of a forest within a forest, a Celtic rainforest of lichens, mosses and liverworts that have a parallel existence outside that of cultivation and civilisation, with a language and living memory aeons older than flowers. |
| Bodnant’s rhododendrons and azaleas, artfully placed in native woodland, are a breathtaking spectacle, a real blast of spring that clears the cobwebs like a visual storm. The woods are full of life and light, and even though many lichens are forever winter-grey, their subtle, strange and miniature beauty is immutable. Together with the flesh-like oak leaves the lichens reveal two worlds in one place, a symbiosis between body and soul, cultivation and the wild. | Bodnant’s rhododendrons and azaleas, artfully placed in native woodland, are a breathtaking spectacle, a real blast of spring that clears the cobwebs like a visual storm. The woods are full of life and light, and even though many lichens are forever winter-grey, their subtle, strange and miniature beauty is immutable. Together with the flesh-like oak leaves the lichens reveal two worlds in one place, a symbiosis between body and soul, cultivation and the wild. |
| • The subheading on this article was amended on 24 May 2018 to correct the location of Bodnant Garden from Gwynedd to Conwy. | • The subheading on this article was amended on 24 May 2018 to correct the location of Bodnant Garden from Gwynedd to Conwy. |
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