A witty placement of a veiled stone head at Gresgarth Hall Gardens in NW England. She’s ‘clothed’ in box topiary that has been trimmed into a cube.
She’s positioned near the door so it’s easy to imagine her as a kind of guardian angel.
The Dorothy Clive Garden in Party Girl Season
Cee’s recent photo challenge asks us to share two selections of pictures to demonstrate warm and cool colours. My visit to the Dorothy Clive Gardens last May immediately came to mind. At that time of year the gardens were brimming with jewel-like colours: the azaleas and rhododendrons were at their peak and the companion planting sensational.
Continue reading “The Dorothy Clive Garden in Party Girl Season”
Recreating Rappaccini’s Garden: an Eden of Poisonous Flowers
I’ve been looking for pictures of plants to bring to life the garden created by Rappaccini, the twisted plant breeder of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fable, and ‘as true a man of science as ever distilled his own heart in an alembic’. Rappaccini, like Frankenstein, used science to create a monster: his beguiling, innocent, but deadly daughter Beatrice. He and his daughter tend a collection of poisonous plants with heady, intoxicating fragrances that can wither and kill. Continue reading “Recreating Rappaccini’s Garden: an Eden of Poisonous Flowers”
Snowdrop season at the Painswick Rococo Garden
If you’re looking for a more quirky woodland walk in snowdrop season, and you don’t mind the odd, short climb, try visiting the Painswick Rococo Garden. It’s all about sweeping vistas, focal points and follies. Continue reading “Snowdrop season at the Painswick Rococo Garden”
Colesbourne Park: The Best Winter Garden in The Cotswolds
That’s just my view of course, but I had a rare chance to visit and see Colesbourne Park for myself, just a few days before it officially opens for the first of their celebrated snowdrop weekends in 2016. Visitors are in for a treat! Continue reading “Colesbourne Park: The Best Winter Garden in The Cotswolds”
White Cottage Garden Plants for a Moon Garden
I prefer to use white flowers as an accent colour, but I know that many people love all white gardens (sometimes called moon gardens because of the way the flowers reflect the light). Here are some of my favourites – I hope you like some of them too. If I’ve mentioned where I photographed them, the gardens are well worth a visit. Continue reading “White Cottage Garden Plants for a Moon Garden”
City Twitchers’ Garden
The post inspired by this week’s photo challenge (circle) has been hatching for some time – since July’s RHS Hampton Court Flower Show to be precise!
When I first saw the garden, the snug dimensions of the globe wicker structure puzzled me until I realised it was a bird hide, woven by willow sculptor Carole Beavis. I must have been experiencing sensory overload at the time (Hampton Court can be like that) or you would have thought the bird houses on the walls, the log pile to attract insects and the wildlife-friendly flowers might have been a clue that this is an urban bird watchers’ garden. Even the cushion covers inside the hide have birds on them! Continue reading “City Twitchers’ Garden”
Susan Rushton 