Celebrating gardens, photography and a creative life
Although we think of hellebores as having petals, technically they are sepals, which accounts for their flowers’ longevity. This single hellebore is one of my favourites I’ve seen this year. Continue reading “Hellebore Hybrids: How Doubles Evolve”
Auriculas have an old-fashioned quality: something about the green flowered and mealy grey flowered ones on display at this year’s N.A.P.S. show mades them seem as if any decent Renaissance poet ought to have written a verse or two in their honour. Continue reading “Flower Macros: Primula Auriculas”
You don’t need me to tell you how the cobweb houseleek (hen-and-chicks, or in botanical terms, Sempervivum arachnoideum subsp. tomentosum) got its folk name. Those with a fear or spiders or a compulsion to dust might find this plant unsettling. If it looks on the creepy side, try to imagine the leaves are playing cat’s cradle.
Delicate webbing covers each chick from infancy, stretching out as the evergreen rosette swells to maturity. Continue reading “Woolly Cobweb Houseleek: Sempervivum arachnoideum ‘Clärchen’”
This garden plant stopped me in my tracks on my walk to the local park. Purple, silken flowers were lit up by a golden boss of stamens; the foliage throwing a silvery mist into the mix.
I’ve never seen pulsatilla growing wild in the UK, and perhaps I never will. This increasingly rare wildflower must be a magical sight. The young, emerging foliage is covered in long hairs creating a halo effect around the buds. Continue reading “Pulsatilla vulgaris: an Easter Treat”
If I was forced to name my favourite flower, there’s a good chance it might be the peony. I love to see the red fronds of the herbaceous type pushing through the soil back to back together in their unearthly fashion around this time of year, full of promise for the season to come. And when their blooms appear – well, could you blame me for deserting the rose in favour of these?
Primrose Hall, a fixture at all the best UK flower shows, are currently teasing a sketch of their proposed 2019 Chelsea Flower Show design online. Arrangements of blooms tower over a garden of peonies. In the background, a garland tumbles down towards flowers floating in a traditional clawfoot bath. That’s my kind of outdoor bathroom!
The pictures I’m sharing here were taken on their stands at last year’s RHS Chatsworth and Hampton Court Flower Shows.
I had thought that there must be more than one peony here but as Primrose Hall’s Alec White, who kindly agreed to identify the peonies, observed, “Note that the corals change colour quite a lot as they mature!”. Continue reading “A Celebration Of Peonies”
Cee has invited us to share close up pictures or macro shots as part of this week’s Fun Foto Challenge – who could resist? My first is a close up of the extremely double Clematis ‘Josephine Pink’. The flower changes considerably as it opens: at this stage, mounds of overlapping inner petals are almost obscuring the bigger ones that form an outer ruff, with still more petals to come.
The great thing about a close up is the textural quality it gives. I hardly know whether the pointed petals would feel stiff or soft if I could reach my hand out and touch the flower. Continue reading “Looking At Flowers Close Up”
