inspiration – Ann Mackay: Inspired by Nature

Something to Read: More Favourite Blogs.

March 29, 2020May 30, 2020 Ann Mackay19 Comments

The scale of changes since this time last year is something I’m still struggling to take in. But, despite everything that Covid 19 is doing to us, spring is coming, growth is beginning, and flowers are blooming.

At a time when most of us expect to be enjoying the outdoors, we’re having to occupy ourselves indoors. So this may be a good time to share more of the blogs I enjoy reading.

Last week’s post with my recommendations for WordPress blogs didn’t allow space for all of my favourites (some of which are not on WP). If you have time to fill, I hope you’ll find some of these enjoyable. They are all art and creative-themed blogs, which I find both engaging and inspiring.

The first two blogs I want to mention have similar themes of artists’ books, textile art, and print. Stephanie Redfern shares her richly-layered work which combines a number of elements including fabric collage and her very delicate pieces of porcelain. Scroll down to the middle of her second post on ‘Books’ and you’ll see the beautiful pages Stephanie created with porcelain ginkgo biloba leaves and moths, along with her own poem.

The work of Annwyn Dean appeals to me greatly because it combines printmaking and artist’s books with great detail and delicacy. I had hoped to see Annywn’s work at the Turn the Page Artists’ Book Fair in Norwich in May – well, maybe next year!

I also find Stephanie Devaux Textus a most enjoyable blog to look at. (It’s written in french, but it is mostly photographs and Google translate takes care of what text there is.) It’s a lovely mix of book art, calligraphy and some textile art – worth a look!

There’s plenty of good reading, as well as beautiful mixed-media and textile art art on Rachael Singleton’s ‘Folio and Fibre’ (Scroll down the page and you’ll see her ‘Mussel House’ – a piece with the most delicious colours and textures.)

My final recommendation is a bit different to the others because it’s mostly about painting. But it also has a lot to say about every aspect of creativity and it’s one of the most helpful and inspiring sites I’ve ever come across – Nicholas Wilton’s ‘Art2Life’ blog. As a photographer, I’ve found what Nick has to say very useful and you never know, maybe I’ll actually try painting some day. (He runs courses for artists but is very generous with the free teaching he gives through Facebook and through his blog.)

I hope that you’ll find something interesting amongst the blogs here that will keep you entertained for a while. Stay home and stay safe!

A Favourite Garden

September 2, 2018March 11, 2021 Ann Mackay10 Comments

I’ve mentioned before that I enjoy visiting other people’s gardens. They’re a great source of both pleasure and inspiration. One of my favourites to visit is the lovely garden created by the late Beth Chatto at Elmstead Market in Essex.

Fortunately for me, I live in the neighbouring county (Suffolk) and I’ve been able to visit the Beth Chatto Garden many times over recent years. But my first visit to the garden was much earlier, while I was still living in Scotland. At the time I was still fairly new to gardening and Mrs Chatto’s book, ‘The Green Tapestry’ had just come out. The book soon became one of my most relied-on sources of information about how to create a garden, so it was a great treat to actually be able to visit the garden that had inspired it.

Water garden at the Beth Chatto Gardens — The view as you enter the garden and look towards the ponds

As you walk into the main part of the gardens, your eye is caught by a series of four large ponds that form the impressive centrepiece of the garden. The water-garden was created to take advantage of water coming from a natural spring and to solve the problem of what would otherwise be heavy, waterlogged ground. The results are beautiful and invite you to wander and linger or just have a seat on one of the benches and relax.

Water garden planting at the Beth Chatto Gardens — Planting along the bank of one of the ponds

It was late spring when we visited and there was new growth everywhere. The garden changes a lot with the seasons and can be dramatically different when the plants have grown to their full size later in the year. Our previous visit had been last autumn, so this felt like quite a contrast, with everything very fresh and green and full of promise for the summer.

A candelabra primula growing by the water

Many of the plants here are familiar to me from Scottish gardens – candelabra primulas, gunnera and ferns particularly – but sadly they won’t grow well in my own very hot and dry garden. (One of the things I learned through reading Beth Chatto’s books was the importance of choosing the right plant for the situation. I’m afraid I condemned a few plants to a slow death by putting them in entirely the wrong place in my earlier gardening days!)

Arum italicum 'Pictum' echoes the shape of the fern but has a contrasting texture and markings. — Arum italicum ‘Pictum’ echoes the shape of the fern but has a contrasting texture.

The planting in the garden is a delight. I love to see the way texture and shape are contrasted (as in the photo above). Actually, I’d really like to grow Arum italicum ‘Pictum’ in my own garden because the lines on the leaves make it a great subject for black and white photographs. (The wild arum keeps popping up here, so it should do well enough.)

Our visit to the Beth Chatto Garden was partly prompted by wanting to get ideas for making a pond in our own garden. (OK, so our pond will be absolutely tiny in comparison, but you might as well look for inspiration from the best!) And there’s a nursery at the garden, so inspiration can easily turn into a few plants to take home with you…

Of course, there are plenty of familiar plants that I can (and do) grow, like the alliums, camassia and forget-me-nots in the border above. And then there’s the plants that I could grow when I lived in Scotland, like the rhododendron below. (Ah, now I really wish I could grow that here!)

White rhododendron — A plant I wish I could have….

The gardens have far more than I can possibly describe here. There appears to be just about any habitat that you can think of – water garden, woodland, shady areas and the sunny scree beds. And then there’s the famous gravel garden with its drought-tolerant planting – it has been a great source of inspiration for our own very dry garden. It’s a garden that I feel I can thoroughly recommend to anyone visiting this area, at any time of year. There’s a nursery and a good tearoom too, so you can easily spend a few hours here.

As you will probably know if you read gardening papers or magazines, Beth Chatto passed away in May this year, aged 94. She has been an inspiration to many and I know that a lot of my own enthusiasm for gardening has come from reading her books. I feel that her legacy is not just in the beautiful gardens that she has created, but also in the love of plants and the understanding and knowledge of them that she has shared with other gardeners.

A quiet spot under a beautiful Cercis siliquastrum (Judas tree or redbud)

A Summer Pleasure

July 15, 2018March 11, 2021 Ann MackayLeave a comment

One of the pleasures of summertime is spending a lazy afternoon wandering around someone else’s garden.

Garden-visiting is a source of inspiration for me. It gives me ideas for how I can improve my own garden. (Seeing new plant combinations, and even just the size that mature plants can get to, is tremendously helpful.) And – in many ways more important for me – it allows me to see plants that I would like to have growing in my own garden so that I can photograph them.

My hubby and I had the chance to spend a couple of days staying at Huntingdon (in Cambridgeshire) this week, so we took the chance to pay a visit to the garden at The Manor in Hemingford Grey.

The Manor at Hemingford Grey is said to be one of England’s oldest continuously-inhabited houses. Building was begun by the Normans in the 1130s. (You can see the evidence of this on one side of the house where the windows have the typical Norman building-style that you can see on old churches. Look out for the round-headed window with it’s zig-zag ornamentation in stone above. Lower down on the same wall you can also see a narrow slit of a window…just like you might find on an old castle wall.)

We entered the garden from the path along the River Ouse, crossing a lawn by walking along a path bordered with topiary yews to reach the house itself. Around the house, the garden looked, to me, like a cottage garden on a big scale. It felt relaxed and welcoming in its informality – just the place to put visitors at their ease.

white hydrangea — White hydrangeas add a dreamy softness to the planting

Visiting in mid-July meant that the roses that the garden is well-known for were over and the flower borders were taking on a late-summer feel. Some areas were bright with the reds and yellows of crocosmias and rudbekias, while other areas were more delicate, with plants such as hydrangeas and daucus carota (wild carrot) adding a more romantic feel.

yellow rudbekia at the Manor, Hemingford Grey — Bright rudbekias gave a sunny touch to the borders

I enjoyed meandering around the garden with camera in hand. Photographing flowers in a garden that you’re visiting is more difficult than it would be in your own garden. You can’t use a tripod, so a macro lens isn’t ideal, nor do you have any control over lighting or the placing of the plant. So for me, the camera is more of a notebook-tool when I’m garden-visiting. It lets me see what plants appeal to me as future subjects and what their possibilities may be. (And it fuels my plant-buying too!)

Daucus carota (wild carrot) is a plant that I want to grow in my own garden.

One of the plants that really caught my eye was the wild carrot (Daucus carota). It is a wonderful shape for photographing and would repay the effort of using a proper macro lens and a good hefty tripod. I have already sown a few plants, which are still tiny and won’t flower until next year. So it was interesting to see the full-grown plant here and to see just how lovely the structure and textures of the plant are. (I think they were probably growing the same variety as I have sown – ‘Dara’, which produces flowers in pink, burgundy-red and white and gives a beautifully delicate effect.)

It’s lovely to visit a garden and see plants through someone else’s eyes, to see their vision for the space within their garden, and to see their own ways of combining plants. This is a garden that I’ll make the effort to come back to again – hopefully timing a visit so that I can see their wonderful collection of irises and then again so that I can see their roses.

We could have visited the house as well as the garden and will do next time. (Visits to the house need to be booked beforehand.) Many people come to see the house because it is the setting for the series of children’s books about ‘Green Knowe’ by Lucy Boston. Her daughter-in-law, Diana Boston, gives a tour of the house that sounds both charming and highly entertaining and would be an essential for fans of the Green Knowe books.

The Manor at Hemingford Grey has a website, which you can see here: https://www.greenknowe.co.uk/

My Favourite Source of Inspiration

June 23, 2018March 11, 2021 Ann Mackay2 Comments

I’ve always loved gardens. Early morning in summer is the best time in mine. It’s still peaceful then, and the demands of the day can be ignored for a little while.

Part of what makes it feel so special to me is the quality of the light at that time of day. It hasn’t yet got the bright glare that it will have later on. Instead, the light slants into the garden, picking out the textures of soft, feathery grass heads and glowing through the translucent petals of flowers. It brings a feeling of joy.

I’m certainly not an expert gardener, so it feels like a small miracle when plants grow well. (Especially if they haven’t had the care they should!) Self-seeded ”babies” are an excitement and sometimes a mystery…

sweet pea and aster flowers — Sweet peas and asters grown for a photograph

There are failures too, and there are always plenty of weeds, but somehow the garden always feels like a place of hope.

From childhood, I’ve been attracted by the look of plants. Not just for their colours, but for their textures and their structures too. (Think of the velvety petals of a petunia or of almost metallic-looking Allium christophii flowers.)

As I’ve grown older, my interest has widened to include the history of plants, the folklore, the stories told about them. (In general the relationship between man and plants. Probably because, for me, it represents the link between ourselves and nature. Because we are a part of nature too.)

There you have it – I’m a plant nut! (And always will be.) And yes, you may have found me out – photographing plants makes an excellent excuse for buying more!