Celebrating gardens, photography and a creative life
Pink seed strains of Nigella damascena seem to be increasingly fashionable at recent British flower shows. It’s a quirky flower, by any standards. Layered petals wheel around a crazy eye above lacy bracts.
The complex, decorative flower form has inspired many folk names. I use love-in-a-mist, but you may know it as love-in-a-tangle, love-in-a-puzzle, kiss-me-twice-before-I-rise, Jack in the green or lady in the bower. Continue reading “Cottage Garden Plants: Pink love-in-a-mist”
The first picture fascinates me: the abundant, varied life; the colours and forms; how snugly these carpeting plants fit together; the apparent harmony, nothing swamping the other; how dainty they all are. I’d love to see this natural design translated into a fabric.
The second is a mystery. A fossil of some kind – a coral, though it looks too round for that, or a sea creature? Continue reading “Tiny Spiky Things”
There’s something about this picture of a Lancashire country idyll that I like. The hillside garden looks serene; the house and land on the far side of the wall have a hazy romance. Inside the walled garden, the soil is rich and well-cultivated. It’s winter, and the garden is girded against the twin assaults of rain and freezing temperatures. Continue reading “Gresgarth Hall’s Walled Kitchen Garden In Winter”
I’m sharing this spacedawg advertising art for Becky’s Spiky MarchSquares. Someone may have de-spiked the picket fence, but luckily for me, the light gleams are spiky. Continue reading “Spacedawg!”
Heyrick Greatorex, our first known snowdrop breeder, was responsible for a series of hybrids known as the Greatorex doubles. Unlike the common, bee-made, short, dumpling-style nivalis doubles, Greatorex’s doubles dangle large, skirted flowers from tall scapes. Introduced during the 1940s and 50s (Heyrick Greatorex died in 1954), their vigour has carried most of them through to today… or so we think!
Comments online suggest that Heyrick Greatorex was ‘an ordinary, untrained home gardener’, but whether you’ll accept that depends how you define ‘ordinary’. Continue reading “Heyrick Greatorex: The Founding Father Of Snowdrop Breeders”
It’s March and Becky from The Life Of B is hosting a new, month-long challenge. This month’s topic is spiky and the only real rule is that the main picture must be a square shape. Please join in if you’re feeling at all spiky!
Susan Rushton 