Country diary: a Welsh garden at its psychedelic best

Bodnant Garden, Gwynedd: Rhododendrons and azaleas flash white, pink, red, orange and blue as the oaks awaken from a long winter dream

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.