Ash – a life-enhancing tree that won't give up easily

Wayland Wood, Norfolk One of the things I love about ash is its reluctance to give up life

The proximity of a busy road to such a glorious fragment of Domesday England is one of my only regrets about Wayland. I also wish this t1000-year-old wood were five times bigger. There is at least consolation in its ownership by the Norfolk Wildlife Trust and in its regime of wonderfully restrained untidiness. At times it feels as if there's as much dead wood on the ground as there is canopy overhead.

The bluebell carpet is all succulent green and there are exquisite clusters of pale lemon laagered in the crinkle-leaved primrose patches. Yet this is still a wood locked in winter. The most magnificent and deadest-looking of all Wayland's trees are the ash. The trunks are bone coloured and bone smooth and, while the hazels' wands have bark that is smoother, they are festooned in swinging catkins and emblematic of a different season.