Celebrating gardens, photography and a creative life
We were fortunate to be able to visit Bridgewater after a night of snowfall this week. As we didn’t win the garden visit lottery by having a bright blue sky too, my pictures are a little sombre – some, even Gothic. Continue reading “Winter Gardens: Visiting RHS Bridgewater on a Snowy Day”
Usually, my posts about flower shows focus on the plants, gardens and planting combinations I enjoyed best, or trends I picked out. Today, I’m taking a step back and illustrating the official trends from this year’s Tatton Park Flower Show.
To be honest, I’d not have guessed all four trends that the Royal Horticulture Society highlighted, but I didn’t have to as the RHS helpfully listed them online.
Billowing clouds of grasses and soft pink colour palettes gave the show a romantic feel with plants spilling onto paths and tumbling over the edges of containers.
Continue reading “On Display: Four Trends From The RHS Tatton Park Flower Show”
Today’s images are linked by featuring edges of various types. I never saw the wonderfully scenic, 300 year old Sycamore Gap tree which has been felled this week by vandals with a chainsaw, but I recently encountered the word ‘solastalgia’ which expresses the shock of the thousands of people who loved this tree. Along similar lines to nostalgia, solastalgia is the distress we feel when much-loved surroundings are altered and we are powerless to do anything about it. It’s a form of homesickness where we are at home, but sick because our home is no longer the same.
In contrast, my fallen tree with splintered edges is an unsung one. I fully feel the outrage about Sycamore Gap, but while it was leading the headlines, the UK’s State of Nature Report 2023 was quietly published, with little attention paid to its reminder that ‘the UK is now one of the most nature-depleted countries on Earth.’ Continue reading “On The Edge: I’m Offering A Mixed Bag And Being Nowty”
Earlier this year we seized the opportunity to visit plantswoman May Vidacovich’s fascinating and beautifully cared for private garden in Louisiana. The garden is a heady mix of plants I know well with others I’d never seen before, or only ever at flower shows.
Normally I’d avoid being out in hot sun and I was tempted to describe it as a fleeting visit. In truth I lingered for longer than it felt at the time and pretty much had to be dragged away in a sorry state of heat exposure and reluctance to leave this piece of paradise.
I’m sharing these pictures with hardly any commentary other than to note that they only skim the surface of what was flourishing there. Continue reading “May Vidacovich’s Garden, Louisiana”
It may not be the first English garden you’d associate with a Palm House, but Sefton Park has one of the prettiest. These tiered buildings hark back to times when palm trees were enough of a curiosity to justify building a magnificent structure to keep palms alive through our winters. Continue reading “Architectural Glasshouses, Greenhouses and Plants”
Sofia invited us to post images that convey a mood. During 2020, I shared a series of pictures for dreaming and was surprised, looking back, that the first and last had not featured. Perhaps they seemed impossibly far away from the reality of the time. Too inaccessible, too reflective. Continue reading “In an Outdoors Mood”
Tina has invited us to post pictures from 2022 that we’ve not so far shared. I have so many to choose from, but I’ve picked some out that, for me, have an evocative sense of place. I’ll let the pictures do the talking. Continue reading “Scenes and Curiosities from Mississippi, Mainly”
Susan Rushton 