Celebrating gardens, photography and a creative life
These plant bedfellows seem to embody contrasts and echoes. Both are linear, with some symmetry, but neither are rigidly so. I get the feeling a mathematician might find reverie here. Curves, curls – wobbles, even – add complexity and soften any harshness. Someone or something has taken a chunk out of one iris petal, but the lines and colours are so hypnotic, we hardly notice it. Continue reading “Macro Monday: Iris With Ferns”
The best roses are prolific. Don’t get me wrong – I do enjoy spotting a spindly climbing rose around the entrance to an old cottage or leaning in a corner of a graveyard as much as the next person. And I try not to judge. Tough enough, these roses give the impression that they are barely clinging on to life. Often they are red ones, throwing out a long, languidly arching stem to one side or the other that they wave around romantically in the wind, careless of their own mortality. Those are the ones that can get away with the merest peppering of tatty blooms and still provoke a genuine ‘ooh!’ or an ‘aah…”, until I pull out a camera, of course, when the ‘ooh!’ usually turns to an ‘oh!’ in an instant.
No, give me the prolific ones, where bloom competes with bloom for its moment in the full sun.
I don’t know the name of the pink rose at the top, but the second one is Rosa ‘Ballerina’, a shrub rose (technically a hybrid musk) that liberally smothers itself in flowers. The young flowers are bee targets, like fried eggs, dressed up in pink edges for a garden party. The elderly flowers lost their pink days ago, paling to white, and making a lovely contrast. Continue reading “Prolific Shrub And Rambler Roses”
These daffodils looked sweet peeping out through the foliage of taller ones. I saw them at Brent and Becky’s Bulbs. I can hardly believe it has three years ago since we were enjoying their company and hospitality – and, of course, their flowers.
Their show gardens must be at or around their prime now and are so very worthy of a visit. If you fancy a peep, check out this post to see what I mean.
It was a joy to see these pretty, little, daisy-like flowers awakening from bud to fully open blooms. Their colour pales as they fully open and age, creating a lovely mix of shades. True to their folk name (windflower) they were bobbing so much on the spring breeze that I thought they might turn out to be just artistic blurs, despite waiting patiently for a lull. Continue reading “Blowing In The Wind: Anemone Blanda”
The ornate, white, metal gazebo at Arley Hall in Cheshire stands ghostly amongst the flowers and neatly trimmed topiary in springtime. I’d describe it as a folly but it has a practical use, making a beautiful backdrop for wedding photography. The matching bench provides a great viewpoint for visitors to linger and enjoy the walled garden.
Part of the joy of visiting Gresgarth Hall Garden is the chance to admire so many well-sourced, premium quality garden accessories – all the bits and bats as we say up North. Each thoughtful touch beautifully enhances the space, from the frog decorated tap (faucet), to garden benches, gates, cloches, terracotta planters, greenhouses – even the plant labels. The lady of the house, Lady Arabella Lennox-Boyd, includes five gold medal-winning Chelsea Flower Show gardens amongst her credits as a landscape designer. So the stone mosaic walkways in Gresgarth’s Zodiac Garden are par for the course: superb modern interpretations of an ancient art.
Knowing that pebble floor designs of ancient Greece, Rome and Mesopotamia still exist today makes me wonder how many centuries these designs will live on the garden pathway. Continue reading “Pebble Mosaic Garden Paving At Gresgarth Hall, Lancashire”
Susan Rushton 