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With spring comes the urge to start visiting gardens again. It’s fascinating to see what other people grow and how they put their gardens together. Naturally, I take my camera too, though perhaps not to the smaller gardens if it seems intrusive. (It would be all too easy to forget that a garden is part of someone’s home.)
Being able to photograph other people’s plants helps me to sustain this blog – something that would soon become impossible if I had to rely on the limited number of plants in my own garden. I do photograph my plants from year to year, but I try to wait a couple of years or more before posting the same plants here. So getting out on a garden visit is essential to bring some variety to this blog.
I sometimes find plants that surprise me, as in the sheer size of the white wisteria in the top photo. It was growing up a huge conifer and pretty much covering the whole tree. Whether, or how, it was ever pruned I don’t know, but it looked most impressive. The same garden provided a little mystery for me too, in the shrub shown in the photo above. Something I’d never seen before. I could see that the flowers looked like they could be related to the rose family, but that the leaves were a different shape. A little bit of Googling suggested to me that it is Rubus ‘Benenden’, an ornamental bramble and a member of the Rosaceae.
My next two plants are more familiar to me…above is a white peony and below is Romneya coulteri, the Californian tree poppy. Both of these are fairly frequent sights in the gardens we visit, but plants we’re unlikely to grow in our own garden. That’s partly through lack of space, and partly through not having quite the right growing conditions. (The Romneya can spread and would take more room than we have to spare, while peonies prefer a richer and heavier soil than we could give them.)
Visiting gardens lets me experience the beautiful plants that other people grow and often gives me the opportunity to to photograph something different to help fill this blog. (As all my fellow bloggers will know, blogs are always hungry for more material, especially photos.) On the day that this is posted, I’m planning to visit one of my favourite gardens in our area (Fullers Mill). If all goes well, the resulting photographs should keep this blog fed for a little while! 🌼
Ann Mackay: Inspired by Nature 
Ah yes, the need to feed a blog. Happy harvest from outlying gardens.
Because Rubus trivialis is common in Austin, even growing wild in our yard, I had no trouble recognizing the kinship in your second photograph. Similarly, the white prickly poppy of Texas doesn’t look all that different from the flower in your final photograph.
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I knew you would understand that one, Steve. At this moment I’m picturing this blog as being like a hungry chick, beak gaping, as it waits for me to feed it, hehe!
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And who can resist white flowers? Except for lovely romneya which came up in my library in my previous house. Tudor houses don’t have much in the way of foundations. It took me ages to finally eradicate it. Have a lovely time at Fullers Mill, you certainly will come back with lots of photos. Years ago, I used to go on nursery crawls with Bernard Tickner. He always spotted and lined up the choicest plants before anyone else had taken their first glance.
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Ah, I can imagine that the romneya would have been a huge headache in that situation. Tudor houses have a great romantic appeal, but a problem like this is not one I would have thought of! It must have been fascinating to accompany Bernard Tickner in a nursery, with lots to learn from him.
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Four wonderful whites. The reason I enjoy visiting other gardens is for the range of flowers that I can’t grow. Romneya coulteri I remember vividly from a garden in Kent where I first saw it. I love the crinkly tissue paper petals and that egg yolk centre. (Goodnestone)
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I always think of eggs when I look at Romneya coulteri – that yellow is so yolk-like and you have the white too…hehe! I love to see the plants I can’t grow and spent this afternoon photographing some that may never be in my own garden, but at least I can still enjoy them. (I bought a season-ticket for Fullers Mill – it’s my favourite garden and reasonably close. There will probably be lots of photos from there. 🙂 )
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I don’t know if it was done intentionally, but I liked the white-flower theme. I love the fact that people open their gardens for others to visit and photograph. They share their beauty and spread happiness.
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I’d been meaning to use the wisteria and the ornamental bramble for a while and it was just good luck that I had the other two white flowers from spring/early summer too. For a keen gardener, visiting other gardens is pure delight and I’m lucky that my hubby enjoys it too. (And it keeps us out of trouble! 😁)
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I do love white flowers, and this is a beautiful collection. It seems to me that visiting other gardens is exactly what I do — except that the ‘garden’ I roam is far larger than even the largest estate. It can be messier, and less predictable, but it sure does supply plenty of blog fodder!
The California tree poppy looks for all the world like one of my Texas favorites: the white prickly poppy. I’ve not yet seen one this year, but I’ll be on the lookout as I roam around my ‘garden’!
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I love the look of freshness that white flowers have, especially against vibrant green foliage. I looked up the white prickly poppy and I can see that they look very alike indeed. (Romneya coulteri is a perennial though, so probably gets much bigger.) Your ‘garden’ is a fabulous one, which delights me with your beautiful finds. 🙂
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flowers are flowers anywhere…be it in your garden or in others! You did a good job, Ann!
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Thank you Indira! It’s good to have the choice of more flowers to photograph by visiting other gardens. I might get some ideas for my own garden too.
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flowers ablaze
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They certainly brighten life up hugely! 🙂
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We have mature blue conifers here, we could saddle one of them with a wisteria I’m sure.. what an interesting idea! Will talk to Nigel about it! The romneya is fabulous and I see it in gardens sometimes around our region – perhaps sometime we can fit one in. Peonies grow well down south and yet I don’t have a single one – probably because I think they need good soil and we don’t have much ground like that. An inspiring post thank you Ann. And yes, I’m trying to re-ignite my blogging efforts again.. I’m so haphazard! But always delighted to come back again to your wonderful photos (that do me a world of good).
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The problem with growing a wisteria up a large tree is that it makes it difficult or impossible to prune. You end up with all these long waving ‘arms’ – like some sort of leafy green octopus, hehe! We don’t have good enough soil here for peonies but I’m hoping that I can improve it gradually. Maybe we’ll have some in the future. Glad the photos are doing you good – and I look forward to reading your blog again! 🙂
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