Ann Mackay: Inspired by Nature

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At last the spring blossom is here. Our apple trees (top) have begun to flower this week. They’re much later than last year. There has been less sunshine than usual, and more rainy days, so it’s not much wonder that the buds on the fruit trees haven’t been keen to open.

(In case you think I’m unhappy about the wet weather, I can assure you that I’m not. That’s because the extra rain will be a blessing if temperatures begin to rise the way they did last year. Excess heat and drought may become a problem here.)

It was still rather grey and breezy when I remembered to photograph the blossom on our very young pear tree. (It had it’s first fruit last year.) I was a bit worried that the blossom might get blown away if the winds persisted, but things calmed down and the blossom survived (photo below). It’s too early to expect more than one or two pears this year, but it was good to be at least able to enjoy the blossom.

Some stronger sun in recent days has now also brought the Morello cherry (bottom photo) into flower and I was even lucky enough to have a bright blue sky for a background. Whether I’ll be able to pick many of the eventual cherries before the blackbirds descend on them is another matter. I do hope they leave me some!

The flowering cherry in our front garden (‘Kanzan’ – a very pretty pink) is flowering surprisingly well this year, given that it has looked sickly for a couple of years. Eventually it may give up the ghost, so I really ought to go and pick a few twigs of flowers so that I can photograph them indoors. (They’re too difficult to get close to otherwise.) And then there’s the lovely deep pink crab apple out on the green in front of us. It is loaded with blossom this year. I think I need to go and get my camera…

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Tulips are wonderful subjects for photography. The flower shapes can vary hugely, some being a simple cup-shape but others being very like lilies or peonies. Their colourings and markings are even more varied and give unlimited opportunities for interesting photographs.

I photographed these tulips last year and again this year, and I was surprised to see how different the flowers look in the two sets of photos. They are a viridiflora tulip (my guess is that they are ‘Dolls Minuet’, but I can’t be sure). Viridiflora tulips all have a green feathered marking spreading from the base of the petals.

Last year’s photos (which you can see here) show these tulips as mainly magenta, with just a slight amount of green blush. The top photograph here is more like those from last year, with perhaps a little more green. But the photograph below shows a lot more green than I had expected.

I’ve just been out for a good look at these tulips again, a few days after the photos were taken. Now I can see that the tulip below has, in that short time, lost much of the green colouring. It has become more like the flower in the top photo. So that suggests to me that the flowers are greener when they first open and gradually change to become more pink.

This is something I hadn’t noticed before…or if I had, I’d forgotten. Spring is a very busy time in the garden, so it’s easy to let things pass by unnoticed. Hopefully next year I’ll remember the strong green markings when these tulips first open. Then I should have time to take some studio photographs of them too.

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As a photographer I find the tiny checkered markings on the petals of Fritillaria meleagris irresistible. Also known as the ‘snake’s head fritillary’ (because of the shape of the unopened buds and the resemblance of the markings to a snake’s skin), it is a most unusual-looking flower.

The distinctive markings have given rise to other names for the plant. ‘Chess flower’ is a pretty obvious one, but ‘guinea hen flower or just ‘guinea flower’ come from the similarity of the checks to the spots on the bird’s feathers. (The Latin ‘meleagris’ has the same meaning.) Then there’s ‘checkered daffodil’ (it isn’t a daffodil) and ‘checkered lily’ (it is a member of the lily family).

Knowing that fritillaries are Liliaceae made me suspect that, like other lilies, they would be highly toxic to cats. I have two cats of my own and occasional feline visitors (or invaders as my two would reckon). So I have kept this plant in a pot that’s out of their way. Turns out that I was right to suspect the fritillary’s toxicity because I’ve just read that the plant contains elements that cause damage to both heart and kidneys. This is probably one to be wary of if you have a cat that likes to nibble plants.

If you’re in the UK or Europe you might be lucky enough to come across a damp meadow where these flowers are growing wild. They used to be much more common in water meadows, especially in the area around the Thames, but gradually disappeared as more land was cultivated. Happily for their survival, they’re a popular garden plant. It’s easy to see why!

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At last it is starting to feel like spring here. A few sunny days have persuaded the first leaves to begin to unfurl. Around the garden flowers are in bud and very gradually opening.

Daffodils have been appearing and going over, some are yet to open. (And I’m smiling to see the return of a few that I thought I may have lost.) Tulips are now showing traces of colour on their still tightly-closed buds and there are forget-me-nots sprinkled through the borders.

Everything is much slower than it was last year, though. Then, the early spring was especially warm and the garden felt full of flowers by the beginning of April. There was a mass of blossom on our few fruit trees – and lots of fruit to follow! This year the cherry and the apple trees look as if it will be a while yet before they’re ready to flower.

However, it’s good to see that life is returning to the garden now. Our young pear tree has just started to open its flowers as I’m writing this. (This year I hope to photograph that blossom before it disappears – I didn’t manage it last year.)

Earliest of the fruit to blossom is a small plum tree – you can see this in both photos. This tree has never yet managed to produce a plum, but it’s early flowers may mean that it manages to keep its place in our smallish garden. (I’m not making any promises to it though!)

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Spring is still taking its time to get established here, but there are signs of new growth and flowers are gradually appearing. These are Anemone blanda, commonly known as the windflower or winter windflower.

Winter windflower seems an appropriate name for a flower blooming now, because our weather has been unusually wet and sometimes windy too. Conditions here are decidedly un-springlike at the moment. Despite this, these small flowers are quietly establishing themselves in amongst the bigger perennial plants that haven’t yet come into growth. Whenever the sun comes out they open their flowers fully and bring a gleam of light to the still somewhat wintry garden.

There are only a few of the white windflowers in the garden so far. We also have the blue windflowers which have begun to spread, so I’m hoping that the white ones will too. These brave little flowers will always be a welcome sight as winter loses its chilly hold on us and we get ready for spring to arrive in full bloom.

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It has been very wet here over the last couple of weeks. That’s actually a very good thing because this part of England (East Anglia) has still been in ‘drought status’, even after the winter. Suffolk doesn’t get a lot of rain, so the rain we’re getting now should help keep everything growing for a good while. (And, I hope, top up the region’s reservoirs too.)

But after so much grey weather, I’m starting to long for sunshine. And flowers! It feels as if spring has been slower in arriving this year. At the end of March last year our fruit trees had come into flower. By the start of April we had a wonderfully frothy display of apple, plum and cherry blossom. That outburst of flowering seems a long way off still.

Happily, there are some flowers appearing. Daffodils have recently opened their gleaming yellow flowers both in the garden and on the green at the front of the houses here. Those on the green are particularly cheerful, with warm orange coronas surrounded by the brightest of yellow petals. En masse, they are an impressive and cheering sight. Up close (as above) they are simply delightful.

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Red always demands attention and there’s nothing subtle about the way this ranunculus flaunts its frill of glowing petals. It makes me think of the over-the-top style of dress that a Hollywood star might wear for an awards ceremony.

Well, maybe that’s my imagination getting a bit carried away, but Ranunculus asiaticus (or ‘Persian buttercup’) certainly has a glamourous look. The flowers provide a stunningly beautiful and richly-coloured display. (And of course, they’re irresistible to this photographer!)

Like the primulas from my last post, these are currently in stock in garden centres. Here in the UK they’re often treated as bedding plants because they aren’t hardy and it’s difficult to save the tubers for re-planting a second year. Plants bought now can be put outside once there is no risk of frost and will give colour in spring and early summer. Or they can be grown from tubers planted in late spring, to then flower in autumn.

I haven’t yet bought any ranunculus this year (the photo is one from a couple of years ago) but I know that I’ll buy them again in the future. They’re too lovely to miss out on. And it would be fun to try to photograph the rest of the colours that they come in…a project for next spring perhaps?

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Unlike the hellebores in my recent posts, the pretty pink-blushed flowers on this plant are upright and easy to see. Recent hellebore breeding has created a number of plants that have out ward-facing rather than downward-facing flowers and these flowers are bigger too, so make a very eye-catching sight.

‘Rosali’ is a recent purchase – I couldn’t walk past it in the garden centre! (So it may be a good thing that I don’t go to garden centres too often…) ‘She’ will join a small group of hellebores just outside the back windows of the house and where there is a change in level with a retaining wall. (That makes the other hellebores easier to see.) The area also gets a bit of shade in the afternoon, so hopefully won’t be too hot in summer.

This hellebore is one of the HGC ‘Ice N’ Roses’ collection (Helleborus glandorfensis), a new species which has been bred as a cross between a Snow Rose and a Lenten Rose (Helleborus ericsmithii and Helleborus x hybrida). This new species of hellebore is tall (at 45cm). It’s also said to be robust and long-lived. I certainly hope it is, because it will always be welcome in the garden as a joyful start to the gardening year.

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Part of the charm of hellebores comes from the variety of markings and colourings on the petals. The two flowers photographed here came from a friend’s garden. At first glance they look like they might be the same flower, but take a closer look and you can see small differences.

The top flower has larger, more diffuse spots that merge with the dark veining of the petals. You can see that the hellebore at the bottom has smaller specks of crimson that don’t obscure the petal’s veins as much. Tiny differences, but they add a lot to the appeal of a group of hellebores growing together.

A very similar hellebore is this little spotty one from my own garden. As the flowers on my plant get older, they become a lot paler than the flowers here. (EDIT: I’ve added a photo of the stages of this hellebore in my garden, so that you can see what I mean. The flower on the left side is darker when newly opened but will become a bit lighter as it develops.)

It will be interesting to see if any seedlings develop from it and the other hellebores growing nearby because they’re all quite different from each other. Maybe I’ll eventually have a family of related plants that have interesting variations like the hellebores in these photos.