Late Winter Colour: Primulas

flower photography

By the time you’re reading this, the garden here will probably be under attack from gale force winds and heavy rain as storm Ciara passes through.

During this sort of gardener-unfriendly weather, I’m very happy to be able to stay inside, working in the comfort of my tiny studio space. So I am always on the lookout for flowers that lend themselves to indoor photography. For this, primulas are very obliging.

Primulas are easily available at this time of year in a great variety of colours and markings. They don’t cost much to buy and the flowers, once picked for the studio, last well in water.

Primulas-4564

To be able to photograph such short-stemmed flowers, I have a collection of very small containers that act as mini vases. The top photo has a square recycled-glass bottle that is only 2 inches high – just the right size for very small flowers. The container in the other photos is probably an old eye-wash glass and it’s wide enough for several flowers.

Other useful ‘vases’ for short-stemmed flowers include vintage ink bottles, candle and tealight holders and shot glasses. It’s been fun shopping for these in junk shops and vintage stalls – you never know what you’ll find that will help to make a good photograph.

Now that the primulas have been photographed, I must decide where to plant them. They somehow look a bit formal and perhaps too showy for most areas of the back garden (which is now developing a more ‘natural’ look), so they’ll probably be planted in the front garden. Sadly, it seems that these highly-bred primulas are not useful to bees so I won’t be buying many of them. (Instead I could buy the yellow-flowered Primula vulgaris, which is native to the UK and is a good plant for bees, butterflies and moths.)

I hope you enjoy this little bit of cheery colour!

Primulas-4557

23 thoughts on “Late Winter Colour: Primulas”

    1. Thanks Indira! I’m grateful for these flowers – there wouldn’t have been much for me to photograph without them. 🙂

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    1. Thank you Syd! It’s amazing what you can get from such commonplace, inexpensive flowers – they’re really good. (And a bright, happy flower to have in a pot by the front door!)

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  7. This is a charming post, Ann. I like imagining you nestled in your studio, surrounded by flowers and writing. I also love your ideas of finding interesting vases and flower holders from antique stores, etc. I often save different glass jars that once carried sauces or jellies or other food items, and I use them to hold flowers from my garden to give to friends. I loved looking at the flowers in different size vases.

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    1. That’s such a lovely idea to give jars of flowers to your friends and they’re all the more special when they’re from your own garden. ‘Surrounded’ is the best word to describe me in my ‘studio’ because there’s so much stuff in there…printmaking things and all my other creative bits and pieces…but I love it!

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    1. I’m glad you like them Jill! (They’re going into the front garden, now that the wind has died down.) Luckily we didn’t have much damage – just a couple of old fence panels. 🙂 Hope you were OK!

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