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”
We all have a style of photography, whether or not we recognise it ourselves. My interest in colours and patterns pre-dates my love of taking pictures and I like to look up close, probably because my long-distance vision leaves something to be desired. Continue reading “Filling the Frame with Flowers and Leaves”
I hope you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me if I start with a digression.
While I welcome the Royal Horticulture Society spreading its presence in the North of England, I wonder if I am alone in seeing signs of failure to understand and fully celebrate life in the north, especially when I visit the young, still-developing RHS Bridgewater.
Perhaps the RHS’s powers-that-be are too far away or too used to a life of plenty to appreciate the creativity and fun in us – our type of fullness. An old Punch cartoon showing a BBC documentary film crew on location in the north comes to mind (even with the watermark you’ll get the gist).
Continue reading “Hebden Bridge’s Tiny Gardens: Pocket Planting as Folkart”
I’m sure many people do a double-take when they first see this unusual delphinium. While the ruffled flowers are a bold, sweet colour – we might call it light red, perhaps, or coral or salmon, with just a hint of a green stripe – they are contrary to what we’d expect. Continue reading “Delphinium ‘Red Lark’”
While I enjoy seeing foxgloves in gardens, I can’t help comparing the straight, sturdy, varieties of commerce to wild foxgloves that weave around Lancashire’s fields and country lanes.
Rarely without some form of wave or bend – the ‘nod’ of folklore – wild foxgloves can grow with aplomb wherever they find themselves, high or low. Much of their charm is in their willy-nillyness. Continue reading “The Wildness of Foxgloves (Digitalis Purpurea)”
Today’s selection of pictures is not exactly wintry, but hardly spring. (What is the equivalent of ‘wintry’ for spring – surely not ‘springy’?) Continue reading “Warmer Shades of Brown in the Liminal Garden”
Susan Rushton 